Pronouns

Don’t use ‘you’ in the Korean language. Why? Because it’s awfully rude. I’ve seen so many students make this mistake and I guess so many textbooks or tutorials taught you not very natural Korean such as ‘당신’. But not on my watch, this Korean pronouns tutorial won’t let any mistake happen to you. Only Korean Jun is AWESOME. WOW. It’s so embarrassing to say it myself but yeah I had to 😂

Pronouns in Korean Language

Korean pronouns are very different from English pronouns. First, since ‘markers’ tell you which word is a subject or an object. In the Korean language, You don’t need subjective pronouns, objective pronouns separately. YAY, it means we have much less to memorize.

Objective or subjective isn’t important for pronouns in Korean language because markers already solve that problem for us. 저’ can be ‘I’ and ‘me’ both.

저는 (I)
저를 (me)

Other pronouns are also the same except 제. 제 becomes 저 when it’s used as an object. By the way, in the introduction of this tutorial, I said using the second person pronoun 당신 can be awfully rude. Then what should we do?

2nd / 3rd Person Pronouns

Let’s imagine someone stopped reading this tutorial before this part. That can be totally possible right? 😂 Well… they really shouldn’t have done that because saying ‘당신 (you)’ or ‘그/그녀 (he/she)’ can be very rude in Korean language.

It’s almost the same as saying ‘bitch’ to strangers in their face 😂. We, native Koreans, use it mostly when we don’t want to humanize other people to insult them. It’s like ‘Yeah… I don’t even want to call you by your name because you don’t deserve it’ 😂. So what do we have to do?

Instead of using ‘you’, ‘he’ or ‘she’, you can ask their name and call them by their name with a title or just a title. For example, I’m your teacher so, for you, it’s proper to call me 준 선생님 (jun teacher) or just simple ‘선생님 (teacher)’. Just like this, the Korean language has many titles that you can use instead of pronouns.

By the way, it’s not so hard to find 당신 because it has a romantic nuance in songs and poems. Native Koreans actually use it to a very intimate person. There are some moments that using 당신 is natural but it’s really tricky. So, we won’t learn about it too deeply.

Plural Pronouns in Korean Language

For 2nd and 3rd person plural pronouns, Korean language choosed a bit different way than singular. It doesn’t use names and titles. It uses phrases that represent a group right away.

준 선생님네는 어디가요?
Where is teacher Jun’s group going
= 준(Jun) + 선생님(teacher) + 네(plural form with names)

다들 어디가요?
Where are you all going?
= 다 (all) + 들 (plural form)

저 사람들이 저한테 말해줬어요
Those people told me
= 저 (that) + 사람들 (people)

Questions

Then, what should we do when we call the 2nd and 3rd person? Is there another way to call them? Yes, there is another way and a big cultural difference. Why don’t you jump to the next tutorial and find out? And if you liked the tutorial, please join us in Patreon to help us keep going!