Casual Speech

In English, we have one basic way to speak to anyone—whether your boss, a stranger, or your best friend. Korean, however, divides the social world into layers, and your choice of verb ending signals respect, distance, or intimacy. This is not just politeness; it's built into the language's DNA.

반말 (casual/informal speech) is used with people of equal or lower social status: close friends, siblings your age or younger, and people you've become genuinely comfortable with. The key word is asymmetry—if there's no status difference, casual speech is appropriate. An English speaker thinks, "I'll speak normally because we're friendly." A Korean speaker thinks, "What is our relative position, and what does my word ending communicate about how I see our relationship?"

Why does this matter linguistically? Because omitting respect morphology is not the same as being friendly in English—it's a deliberate social signal. When you use 반말, you're saying: "I see us as peers, or you're below me in the hierarchy." This is why carelessly dropping politeness with your boss is offensive—you're not being casual; you're claiming a status relationship that doesn't exist. Conversely, continuing to use formal speech with your close friend can feel distant or cold, even if the words are kind.

The forms themselves are straightforward: verbs and adjectives drop their polite suffix and take simple vowel-harmony endings (-아 after ㅏ/ㅑ sounds, -어 after others). For nouns, you may add -이야 or -야. But the real challenge is the mindset: English speakers must learn to see language as a social coordinate system, not just a tool for information transfer.