Lesson 1.3 – Greetings! How To Say “Good Morning” In Korean

Hello everyone! It’s been a while since our last lesson, right? Let’s continue learning!

Now, when we greet someone in the morning, a simple hello would do but there are times we use Good Morning as well; to greet others and also to start the day on a positive note. Our lesson for today will focus on the different ways of saying “Good Morning” in Korean. Some of you might have heard Koreans say Good Morning in dramas or on social media accounts so you might be a little familiar with it.

Like always we’ll be dividing it into informal and formal, maybe add a little bonus at the end? Anyway, let’s jump straight into it!

The informal way of saying Good Morning is – 좋은 아침 (Romanised pronunciation: Joh-eun A-chim). Simple right? You can use the informal way with friends, people you’re close to or someone younger than you.

Now the formal way of saying Good Morning has quite a few different ways which could confuse you a little but let’s get started and look at each one of them. We’ll start with the most standard way of the greeting first.

STANDARD WAY – 좋은 아침이에요 (Romanised pronunciation : Joh-eun A-chim-i-e-yo) You can use this standard way with colleagues or someone older than you with whom you wish to maintain formality. You can also use it with someone whom you don’t know. It’s the most standard phrase for Good Morning.

 FORMAL WAY – 좋은 아침입니다 (Romanisation: Joh-eun A-chim-im-in-da). Literally means ‘It’s a good morning’. It is a formal way of saying it. It can be used with an older person or someone you want to say it to in a respectable way.

Now there are 2 more formal ways of saying Good morning. They are used (again) with someone who is older than you or someone of a higher rank. Eg- your grandparents.

• 잘 주무셨어요? (Romanised pronunciation : Jal Ju-mu-syeoss-eo-yo). Literal translation is – ‘Did you sleep well?’
• 안녕히 주무셨어요?  (Romanised pronunciation : An-nyeong-hi Ju-mu-syeoss-eo-yo) Literal translation – ‘Did you sleep peacefully?’

BONUS – These are some of the different ways of saying Good Morning. Note : first one is informal and second one is formal ( after the / ) 

1) 잘 잤어?/ 잘 잤어요? – (Romanised pronunciation : Jal Jass-eo/ Jal Jass-eo-yo). It also means ‘Did you sleep well?’. You can use this with your friends, while texting or even while talking on the phone. If you want to use it with someone who is around the same age as you but you’re not close, you can simple add “요” to make it a little more polite.

2) 굿모닝 – (Romanised pronunciation – Gut- mo -ning). You can use this while texting or even while greeting someone. It literally means Good Morning but written in Korean.

So these were the different ways of saying Good Morning. How was it? We hope these lessons have been helping you learn Korean. If you have any doubts please leave a comment below and we’ll try our best to address it in the next lesson. Check out our previous lessons here if you haven’t already.

See you all soon. Till then, Happy Learning!