Find the people before changing the verb

You are telling a colleague that a teacher gave another teacher some materials. Adding 요 makes the sentence polite to your colleague, but it does not settle how you refer to the two teachers. There can be several relationships inside one sentence.

This advanced lesson asks you to track those relationships separately. The listener hears your sentence. The subject is the person whose action or state the predicate describes. The recipient, in the giving examples here, receives the materials. One person can occupy more than one role, but the roles are not interchangeable.

You should already be able to read polite past forms and identify who does an action. Review 은/는 and 이/가 in context if the subject and topic markers are unfamiliar. Our aim is a reliable editing method, not a list of expressions ranked from “least polite” to “most polite.”

Three choices can coexist in one sentence

선생님께서 저에게 자료를 주셨어요. means “The teacher gave me the materials.” The teacher is the giver, 저 is the recipient, and the listener is whoever is being told this. That listener does not have to be either person named in the sentence.

At the sentence ending, 해요-style forms such as 주셨어요 address the listener politely. A more formal report can use 주셨습니다. The respectful reference to the teacher remains inside both forms; changing the final style does not change who gave the materials.

For an ordinary verb, -(으)시- can mark respect for the subject. Compare 선생님이 오셨어요. — “The teacher came.” — with 제가 왔어요. — “I came.” Both politely address the listener. The first also honours the teacher through 오셨-, whereas the speaker does not normally honour their own action with 시.

께서 is an honorific subject marker; 께 is a respectful counterpart of 에게 or 한테 in the recipient examples below. Keep their jobs separate. 께서 identifies the subject, while 께 identifies the person receiving the materials. The shorter spelling is not simply a casual version of the longer one.

Compare 주시다, 드리다 and 드리시다

The third form, 드리시다, is valid. It combines recipient-oriented 드리다 with subject-oriented 시. Calling it “too polite” or treating 드리다 as automatically covering both relationships loses a useful distinction. Here the stated relationship between Kim and Park makes the choice concrete.

English “give” does not tell you which Korean form to choose. First draw an arrow from the giver to the recipient. Then ask whom you are respectfully referring to, taking the setting and relationships into account. Finally choose the style for the person listening to your report.

Do not reverse the arrow to make a sentence look more respectful. If the teacher gave you the materials, 저는 선생님께 자료를 드렸어요 describes the opposite event. It is grammatical, but it is not a corrected version of the same report.

Respect the listener without honouring yourself

Suppose you tell a teacher that you sent the materials yesterday. 제가 어제 자료를 보냈어요. — “I sent the materials yesterday.” — already politely addresses the teacher. For a more formal style, use 제가 어제 자료를 보냈습니다.

Changing that to 제가 어제 자료를 보내셨어요 would normally honour the speaker’s own sending action. The fact that a teacher is listening does not make the teacher the subject of 보냈어요. Keep 제가 and the action connected as you edit.

When the action is done for the teacher, you can explicitly include that relationship: 제가 선생님께 자료를 보내 드렸어요. — “I sent the materials to the teacher.” 보내 드리다 presents the sending as an action performed for the respected recipient. It still does not add subject honorification to 제가.

The contrast appears in questions too. 제가 도와 드릴까요? — “Shall I help you?” — offers the speaker’s help respectfully. 도와주시겠어요? — “Would you help me?” — requests the listener’s action in this context. The second question can honour its subject and address that same person politely, because the listener is also the proposed helper.

Choose a respectful word for its actual meaning

Do not mechanically replace every 있다 with 계시다. The location sentence and the question-possession sentence describe different things. Likewise, copying a respectful word from a question into your own answer can misplace the respect: someone can ask your 성함, while you answer using 이름.

In 자료가 도착했어요. — “The materials arrived.” — the arriving subject is 자료, the materials. You do not need 도착하셨어요 merely because the materials belong to a teacher. This narrow example should not become a claim that every apparent non-person subject with 시 is wrong: indirect honorification requires looking at the person connected with that subject and the construction being used.

Read a short handover account

In this fictional account, Alex is a learner helping at a workshop. Teacher Kim is a teacher whom Alex respects; Teacher Park is Kim’s senior mentor. Alex is speaking politely to a fellow organiser. Read once for the movement of the materials, then again for the respectful forms.

제게 is a shortened form of 저에게, “to me.” In the first sentence, Kim gives and Alex receives. In the second, Alex sends to Park. The respectful verb changes because the direction and the acting person have changed.

The third sentence needs both relationships: Kim is an honoured giver, and Park is the respected recipient in this setting. 드리셨어요 handles both. In the last sentence, 확인하신 honours the two teachers doing the checking, but 작성했어요 does not put 시 on Alex’s own writing. One sentence can therefore contain two predicates with different honorific choices.

The English version keeps who did what, but ordinary English verb forms do not carry every Korean distinction. A translation should not invent a new action, such as “ordered” or “approved,” just to make the respectful relationship visible. 확인하다 here is checking; it does not by itself tell us a formal approval was granted.

Use the relationship, not an age-only formula

The people in our examples have specified roles so you can practise the grammar. In real conversations, formality, familiarity, institutional expectations and how people address one another also matter. You cannot derive every appropriate choice from a stranger’s apparent age.

A missing 께서 does not automatically mean the whole sentence is disrespectful. 선생님이 오셨어요 still has subject honorification in the predicate. Our chart makes the roles explicit for study; it is not a demand to use every available honorific marker in every sentence.

When unsure how to address someone, begin with a polite style and the name or role they use for introductions. Before editing a sentence, write the event in plain English: “Kim gave the materials to Park.” If your Korean revision reverses that event or makes the speaker the honoured subject, revisit the roles before adding another ending.

Edit the relationship while keeping the event

A small listening check

References for the three relationships

• University of British Columbia: honorific nouns and particles — Reference for the roles of 께, 께서 and respectful noun choices.
• University of Pennsylvania: You Speak Korean!, Book 3, Lesson 10 — The honorifics section distinguishes giving relationships and includes the combined form 드리시다.
• National Institute of Korean Language: educational grammar, 2005 (Korean PDF) — Printed page 192 contrasts 주시다, 드리다 and 드리시다. This historical article is used for that grammatical distinction, not as a universal rule for present-day family etiquette.

Reviewed September 3, 2026. Found a mistake? Send a correction.