Formality, politeness and respect in Korean language? I have been learning Korean language quite a while now. But I am not sure that I have understood the speech levels and honorifics very clearly. To my knowledge, there are four speech levels that are commonly used (out of seven), one usually being used in the written texts (해라체). Those speech levels are used to show the speaker’s and the listener’s status among each other. While some levels can be impolite and informal, some are both polite and formal. Here is my first question: what exactly is this politeness and formality and how should I think of them when the rest of the speech levels are also considered?(1) Besides that, some speech levels indicate respect towards the speaker. However honorifics are also used for the same intention. If so, why honorifics are used in a low level like ”해체”-(해/하셔) if it is used to show respect or why you need to use them in “하십시오체”-(합니다/하십니다) which does already show the high respect?(2)...............In some places even if you use하십시오체, without honorific “시” it sounds rude. That is where I get confused. Also, I had heard that honorific infix “시” is used only when the subject of the sentence is any human being but the speaker. In this respect, you should use this infix to clarify whether you are talking about yourself or somebody else (because you can never use it when you refer to yourself). However in some cases I have seen this infix was not used when it was referring to the other person. Why is this and when can I omit honorific “시” ?(3) Can you please explain the difference between, * 해 * 해요 * 합니다 * 하셔 * 하세요 * 하십니다 I have already read many articles about this subject. However, I would like to make sure to use the right thing in the right place.