The Full Formality Ladder: All Six Levels Compared

Once you have met the speech levels one at a time, you need a single picture that shows the whole system at once. This page is that picture: one verb, 하다 ("do"), conjugated through all six addressee levels across all four sentence types, with 가다 ("go") as a parallel check. Print it, screenshot it, tape it to the wall. Everything else in the honorifics module is a footnote to this grid.

Two things make the table more than a memorization chore. First, it reveals at a glance what Korean grammaticalizes that English simply does not — an entire ladder of addressee relationships folded into the verb ending. Second, its shape corrects the single most common misconception about Korean politeness: that the levels form a straight line from rude to respectful. They don't. As you'll see, "polite" splits in two, and the plain style sits off the scale entirely.

The declarative ladder

Here is 하다 and 가다 as a plain present-tense statement, from highest deference at the top to lowest at the bottom, with each rung marked living or archaic.

Note that 한다체 is not at the bottom — I have placed it where tradition does, but it is not "less polite than 해요체." It is off the politeness axis altogether, a point the final sections make good on.

The full grid: all four moods

Now the whole thing. Each cell is 하다 in that level and sentence type. Where a level offers a common alternant, it is given after a slash.

Two structural facts jump out of this grid, and both matter.

• 합니다체, 한다체, and 하게체 keep four distinct mood endings. In these formal/written levels the verb ending itself tells you whether the sentence is a statement, a question, a command, or a proposal — you can identify the sentence type with the sound off.
• 해요체 and 해체 collapse all four moods into one form. 해요 is statement, question, command, and proposal; only intonation and context split them apart. This is the everyday spoken shortcut, and it is why conversational Korean feels so much lighter than the grid looks.

The living four in action

Feel how different those four registers are while describing ordinary events. The 합니다체 line could open a press conference; the 한다체 line could be a weather-app push notification addressed to nobody; the 반말 line could only pass between friends.

해요체 and 해체 collapse the moods

Because 해요 does the work of all four sentence types, the same three syllables mean four different things depending on intonation and situation.

Contrast that economy with 합니다체, where each of those would take a different ending — 갑니다 / 갑니까? / 가십시오 / 갑시다. The formal levels spell the mood out; the casual-polite level lets intonation carry it.

The two archaic rungs — recognition only

You will see 하오체 on old signs (출입을 금하오) and hear it and 하게체 throughout 사극; you will meet 하게체 in the mouths of older speakers addressing grown juniors. You will not need either to be understood or polite in modern life. Their full portraits are on 하오체, the archaic formal and 하게체, the avuncular style.

Why English speakers misread the ladder

In English, every cell of this entire grid collapses to one small paradigm: do / does / do? / let's do. English marks the sentence type (statement vs. question vs. command) but carries no grammatical trace of who you are speaking to. Politeness in English is lexical and optional — "could you possibly," "sir," a softened tone — never wired into the verb. So this table is the single clearest demonstration of the gap: Korean bakes the addressee relationship into the ending itself, obligatorily, every time you finish a sentence.

That gap breeds a specific error. Because English speakers experience politeness as a dial from blunt to deferential, they read the six-rung ladder as a straight thermometer — 합니다체 "most polite," 반말 "least polite." But the ladder is really a 2-D grid: one axis is formality (formal/written vs. casual/spoken), the other is deference (does the ending grammatically raise the listener or not?).

Two consequences fall straight out of the grid, and both dissolve real confusion:

• "Polite" splits into two living levels. 합니다체 and 해요체 both defer to the listener; they differ only in formality. That is why a warm, respectful conversation runs on 해요체 while a press briefing runs on 합니다체 — reaching for 합니다체 with a friend doesn't add respect, it inserts cold distance.
• 한다체 sits off the deference axis. The plain 한다/간다 style is neutral and impersonal — the voice of textbooks, news, and diaries, addressed to no particular listener. It is not "the rude end of the scale"; 간다 is not a harsher 가. It simply isn't playing the deference game at all. (See 한다체 moods for how the plain style handles each sentence type.)

After this table: the other axis

Everything above is the addressee axis — respect for the person you are talking to, encoded in the sentence-final ending. Korean has a second, orthogonal honorific system that this grid does not touch: the subject honorific -(으)시-, which raises the person you are talking about.

That sentence stacks both systems: 되십니까 is 합니다체 (addressee) and carries -시- (subject honorific), and it swaps in the honorific noun 성함 for plain 이름. The two axes are independent — you can be casual with the listener while honoring the subject, or formal with the listener about a subject you don't raise. Once this ladder is solid, move to the subject honorific -(으)시-, which is where the second dimension lives.

Common Mistakes

1. Treating 합니다체 as "more respect" than 해요체. Both defer to the listener. The difference is formality, not degree of respect — so 합니다체 with a friend reads as stiff, not extra-polite.

2. Filing 한다체 at the bottom as "rudest." 한다체 is the neutral written register, off the deference axis. 간다 in a diary or news lede is not blunt at anyone.

3. Reaching for the archaic 하오체/하게체 to sound extra-respectful. They are not a higher grade of politeness — they are period pieces. Real modern respect is 해요체 / 합니다체.

4. Assuming the addressee ending also handles subject respect. The ladder raises the listener; honoring the person you're describing needs the separate -(으)시-. A 합니다체 ending alone does not honor your grandfather as a subject — 할아버지가 옵니다 is formal to the listener but fails to raise grandfather; you need 오십니다.

Key Takeaways

• One grid holds the whole system: 하다 as 합니다 / 하오 / 하네 / 한다 / 해요 / 해, with matching question, command, and proposal columns.
• Four rungs are living (합니다체, 해요체, 한다체, 해체) and two are archaic (하오체, 하게체). Master the four; recognize the two.
• Formal levels (합니다체, 한다체, 하게체) keep four distinct mood endings; 해요체 and 해체 collapse the moods into one intonation-split form.
• The ladder is a 2-D grid of formality × deference, not a single thermometer — which is why "polite" splits into 합니다체 and 해요체, and why 한다체 sits off-axis as neutral/written.
• This is the addressee axis. The orthogonal subject-honorific -(으)시- raises the person you talk about, and stacks on top of any rung.