Korean Causative vs English make / let / have

English carves causation into a fleet of little verbs — you make a child eat, let a child sleep, have the plumber fix the sink, get your friend to help. Each one carries a precise reading: make is coercion, let is permission, have is arrangement, get is persuasion. Korean does not wire this distinction into its causatives. The single causative form 재우다 ("put to sleep") and the periphrastic V-게 하다 (자게 하다) both cover "made the child sleep" and "let the child sleep." Nothing in the verb itself tells you which. This page is about un-learning the reflex to hunt for a separate Korean word for each English causative verb — because that word usually does not exist, and the search produces clunky, unnatural Korean.

The core reframing: coerce and permit share one form

Take one Korean sentence and notice how many English sentences it translates:

There is no ambiguity for the Korean speaker — the context of the conversation settles it instantly. But if you force yourself to translate word-for-word into English, you find that 자게 했어요 sits calmly on top of two English sentences that feel like opposites. The Korean simply does not encode the coerce-versus-permit contrast that English treats as essential. The same is true of the suffix causative:

재우다 is the suffix causative of 자다 ("sleep"), formed with -우- and a vowel change (자 → 재). It means "put/get to sleep" with no built-in verdict on whether force was involved.

When you genuinely need to force the reading

Korean is not helpless here — it just disambiguates optionally, and only when the situation demands it. Two tools do most of the work.

To force "make / coerce," add an adverb like 억지로 ("forcibly, against their will"):

To force "let / allow," swap the neutral 하다 for a helper that means "leave be": 놔두다 (from 놓아두다, "leave alone") or 해 주다 (do it as a kindness, which naturally reads as permission):

So the machinery English hard-codes into make vs let, Korean adds only when it matters: 억지로 leans it toward coercion, 놔두다 / 해 주다 leans it toward permission, and the bare causative stays neutral.

The bigger surprise: many causatives are just plain English verbs

Here is the reframing that saves the most grief. A large share of Korean's morphological causatives correspond to a single ordinary English transitive verb, not to a "make + verb" phrase at all. English already lexicalized the causative — it just used a different root.

You would never say "make the baby eat" for the ordinary act of feeding, "make the mosquito die," or "make the car stand." Neither does Korean reach for 만들다 or 하다 here — it uses the compact causative that is the verb. Treat these as vocabulary, not as a formula you assemble on the fly. (The suffix that derives each — 이/히/리/기/우/구/추 — is lexically fixed per verb; the morphological causative overview and the suffix-selection guide map out which stem takes which.)

시키다: the one that really does mean "have someone do it"

When you do want the "have / order someone to do a task" reading — a boss assigning work, a teacher setting homework — Korean has a dedicated verb: 시키다. It attaches most naturally to Sino-Korean 하다-nouns (공부, 청소, 숙제) and to people marked with the dative 에게/한테.

This is closest to English "have someone do X" or "make someone do X," and it carries a whiff of authority — the subject has the standing to assign the task. See 시키다: ordering an action for the full pattern.

Why not just use 만들다 for everything?

Because 만들다 ("make/create") as a causative — V-게 만들다 — is real but marked. It is not the neutral default; it specifically emphasizes that the subject brought about a change of state, often an emotional or unintended one. Reaching for it every time you see English make produces stilted Korean.

That sentence is fine — a film causing an emotional result is exactly what V-게 만들다 is for. But "put the child to sleep" is a plain, everyday act with a plain, everyday verb, and dressing it up as 자게 만들다 sounds like a translation, not like Korean. Compare V-게 하다 (neutral periphrastic causative) with V-게 만들다 (the "bring about a result" causative) to feel the difference.

Common Mistakes

1. Over-translating with 만들다 for a neutral act. The named trap: English make pulls learners toward 만들다 even when a compact causative is the natural Korean.

2. Building a 만들다 / 하다 phrase where a single causative verb exists. "Feed" is 먹이다, full stop — not a "make eat" construction.

3. Same error with "kill." 죽이다 already is "kill"; you don't cause someone to die periphrastically for an ordinary killing.

4. Hunting for a separate 'let' verb. There is no dedicated Korean verb whose meaning is exactly English let. Use the neutral causative and, if you must, add 놔두다 / 해 주다.

5. Using 서게 하다 for "park." 서다 is the intransitive "stop/stand"; its causative "stop/park (something)" is the lexical 세우다.

Key Takeaways

• Korean does not lexicalize the make (coerce) vs let (permit) contrast. 재우다 and 자게 하다 each cover both readings; context decides.
• Force the reading only when needed: 억지로 → coercion; 놔두다 / 해 주다 → permission.
• Many morphological causatives are a plain English verb — 먹이다 = feed, 죽이다 = kill, 세우다 = park, 살리다 = save. Learn them as vocabulary.
• Use 시키다 for genuine "have/order someone to do a task," and reserve V-게 만들다 for "bring about a result," not for neutral acts.
• The reflex to translate English make/let/have/get into four Korean verbs is the mistake — one causative plus context is the native pattern.