Yes/No Questions by Intonation: 해요체 -아/어요?

Here is the single most liberating fact about asking questions in Korean: in the everyday polite register 해요체, a yes/no question uses the exact same form as the statement. You change nothing about the words. You raise your voice at the end (and, in writing, add a question mark). That is the entire operation.

Same three syllables, same particle, same verb ending. The only difference is the pitch at the end and the ? on the page.

Why this feels strange to English speakers

English restructures a sentence to ask a question. "You eat" becomes "Do you eat?" — English inserts the dummy auxiliary do and flips the word order. Other European languages invert subject and verb (French tu manges → manges-tu?). Every one of these is a syntactic operation: the machinery of the sentence physically rearranges.

Korean does none of that. It marks a yes/no question prosodically — with intonation — not syntactically. So the mental habit to unlearn is the search for a "question operation." There is nothing to insert, nothing to move, no auxiliary to conjure. Word order stays resolutely SOV; every particle stays exactly where it sits; the verb ending is untouched. You simply take the statement and lift the final pitch.

The pattern in action

Because nothing changes, you can turn any 해요체 statement you already know into a question for free.

Descriptive verbs (adjectives) like 바쁘다 and 예쁘다 behave the same as action verbs — Korean adjectives conjugate and predicate on their own, so 바빠요 is already a full sentence, and 바빠요? is already a full question. The past tense is no different: add nothing beyond the rise.

Even a noun predicate with the copula follows the rule — 학생이에요 ("[you] are a student") becomes the question just by rising:

Pro-drop makes the pitch do double duty

Korean routinely drops the subject, so the same string 가요 can mean "I go," "you go," "she goes," and so on — context fills it in. This is exactly why intonation carries so much weight. In practice, a falling 가요 defaults to a first-person statement ("I'm going"), while a rising 가요? defaults to a second-person question ("are you going?"). The pitch is not decoration; with no subject spoken and no word reordered, it is often the only thing telling your listener whether you are reporting or asking.

Negation changes nothing about the mechanism: 안 고파요 is a statement, 안 고파요? is a question, distinguished only by intonation.

Yes/no melody vs wh-question melody

Because the form never changes, intonation sometimes does more than mark a question — it disambiguates two entirely different questions. Korean question words like 뭐 ("what/something") and 누구 ("who/someone") double as indefinites, so a single string can be a yes/no question or a wh-question depending on the melody:

In the yes/no reading, 뭐 is the indefinite "something" and the whole sentence rises. In the wh-reading, 뭐 is "what," carries the sentence's melodic peak, and the pitch tends to fall toward the end — the question word itself has already signalled a question, so the final rise isn't needed. This is why wh-questions and indefinite readings live or die by intonation. For a pure yes/no question, keep the rise clean and rising all the way through.

Softer alternatives when a bald rise feels abrupt

A plain rising 가요? is neutral, but sometimes it can feel a little blunt or point-blank. Korean has gentler, more musing question endings that soften the ask — chiefly -나요? (with verbs) and -(으)ㄴ가요? (with adjectives and the copula). They add a wondering, considerate tone, as if you're gently pondering aloud.

These endings have their own page; for now, just know that when a bare rise feels too direct, -나요?/-(으)ㄴ가요? is the polite dial-down.

The one register that DOES change the ending

There is exactly one common register where Korean marks a question morphologically — the formal 합니다체, where the statement ending -(스)ㅂ니다 becomes the question ending -(스)ㅂ니까? (갑니다 → 갑니까?). That is the closest Korean comes to European-style question marking, and it has its own page. But in 해요체 — the register you will speak most — there is no such switch. Statement and question are twins.

Common Mistakes

1. Reordering the sentence like English. There is no verb to move to the front. The verb stays last (SOV).

2. Inventing a question particle to tack onto 해요. There is no auxiliary and no extra marker to insert in 해요체. Don't graft the formal 까 (or 니) onto it.

3. Fronting the copula on a noun question. 학생이에요? is already the question — don't split off 이에요.

4. Forgetting to raise the pitch. In speech, flat or falling intonation turns your intended question into a statement. In writing, the ? is the only signal — leave it off and the reader sees a statement.

Key Takeaways

• In 해요체, a yes/no question is identical to the statement — same words, same order, same ending. Only rising intonation (and a written ?) marks it.
• Korean marks yes/no questions prosodically, not syntactically: no do-support, no inversion, no added particle. Word order stays SOV.
• This holds for action verbs, adjectives, the past tense, negatives, and noun + copula alike (가요?, 바빠요?, 먹었어요?, 안 고파요?, 학생이에요?).
• With the subject usually dropped, the pitch often carries the whole statement-vs-question distinction.
• The one register that does change the ending for questions is formal -(스)ㅂ니까?.