Seeking Agreement: -지(요)? / 죠?

Not every question is a genuine request for information. Sometimes you already believe you know the answer and you're just fishing for the other person to nod along: "It's delicious, right?", "You came yesterday, didn't you?", "You're the new intern, aren't you?". English handles this with a small army of tag questions that shift shape by verb and polarity — isn't it? / doesn't he? / aren't they? / didn't you?. Korean does the whole job with one invariant ending: -지(요)?, and its everyday contraction 죠?.

The core meaning: confirm, don't inform

-지(요)? presents a proposition you're already fairly confident about and invites agreement. You're not in the dark — you're seeking a yes. This is fundamentally different from a neutral yes/no question, which genuinely doesn't know the answer.

In each case the speaker has a belief (it's tasty; you came; you're a student) and is checking it against the listener's knowledge. The expected reply is agreement — 네, 맞아요 ("Yes, that's right").

One invariant ending — the payoff for English speakers

Here's where Korean is dramatically simpler than English. English rebuilds the tag from scratch for every sentence: you must pick the right auxiliary, copy its tense, and flip its polarity — She's coming, *isn't she? He left, didn't he? They can't swim, can they?* Get any piece wrong and it sounds foreign.

Korean attaches the same -지(요)? to everything — verb, adjective, copula, past tense — with no agreement, no polarity flip, nothing.

The falling-tone twin: shared, obvious knowledge

Give -지(요) a falling intonation and drop the question mark, and it stops asking anything. Instead it frames a statement as something already obvious, mutually known, or a matter of course — the "well, of course" move.

Here 좋죠 isn't asking whether it's good — it's asserting "obviously that's good," presenting the speaker's view as self-evidently shared. The same ending, then, does two things depending on pitch: rising = "…right?" (seek agreement), falling = "…of course" (present as obvious). This prosodic double-life is a hallmark of -지(요), explored further on the discourse -지요/죠 page.

Register: the 요 switch

As with every 해요체 ending, the 요 marks polite register. Drop it for 반말 (plain, intimate speech): -지? / 죠? → -지?.

The polite 우리 내일 만나죠? and the casual 우리 내일 만나지? mean the same thing at different social settings.

Beyond tags: building rapport and softening your own claims

-지(요)? does more than fish for a yes — it's a rapport-builder. By framing something as shared knowledge, you pull the listener onto the same side as you. Two strangers commiserating about the heat with 오늘 진짜 덥죠? aren't exchanging weather data; they're bonding over a shared experience. This "we both know this" flavor is why -죠 saturates friendly small talk.

The falling -죠 also softens your own assertions. Instead of baldly stating an opinion, you can present it as something reasonable people already accept, taking the edge off:

Here -죠 doesn't ask a question at all; it wraps a personal claim in an air of common sense, making it easier to accept. This is closely related to the shared-knowledge ending -잖아요, which asserts "as you know" more forcefully; -죠 is the gentler, more inviting cousin that leaves the listener room to agree on their own.

Answering a -지(요)? question

Since -지(요)? fishes for agreement, the natural reply confirms it — 네, 그렇죠 ("Yes, that's right") or 네, 맞아요. When the speaker's assumption happens to be wrong, a bare 아니요 can feel abrupt, because they were confidently expecting a yes; soften the correction instead of flatly denying.

The second reply cushions the disagreement with 아 and 좀 rather than colliding head-on with the questioner's expectation — the polite reflex whenever you have to overturn a confident -죠?.

When NOT to use it

Because -지(요)? presupposes agreement, using it for a real, open question is a genuine error of meaning, not just tone. If you honestly don't know whether the store is open, asking 지금 문 열었죠? implies you already believe it's open and just want confirmation — which can confuse or even pressure the listener. For a genuine unknown, use 열었어요? or 열었나요?.

There's also a social hazard in the other direction: tagging every sentence with 죠? sounds pushy, as if you're constantly herding the listener toward agreement. Native speakers deploy it selectively, at moments where shared knowledge is plausible.

Common Mistakes

1. Using -지(요)? where the answer is genuinely unknown. It presupposes agreement, so it misfires when you truly can't assume the answer.

2. Making the ending agree with the verb, English-style. -지(요)? never changes shape — no auxiliary, tense-copy, or polarity flip.

3. Over-tagging every sentence. A 죠? on every line reads as pushy or needy.

4. Reading a falling -죠 as a question. With a falling tone, -죠 asserts obviousness; it isn't asking.

Key Takeaways

• -지(요)? / 죠? is Korea's compact, invariant tag question — attach it to any verb, adjective, copula, or past form without agreement or polarity changes.
• It presupposes agreement: use it when you already believe the answer and want a "yes," not for genuine unknowns.
• 죠? is the everyday contraction of 지요? and is pronounced [조] (-jo), with the glide dropped after ㅈ.
• Rising tone = "…right?" (seek agreement); falling tone = "…of course" (present as obvious).
• Drop 요 for 반말 (-지? / 그렇지?); don't over-tag, which sounds pushy.