한테, 에게, 께: How Korean Says "To a Person"

한테, 에게, and 께 all mean "to a person" — they mark the receiver of give/tell/send/call verbs. 한테 is what you'll actually hear in speech; 에게 is its formal-writing twin, used in essays, news, and books. 께 is the honorific upgrade for elders, teachers, and superiors, and it almost always shows up paired with the humble verb 드리다 ("give," respectful form) instead of plain 주다.

이 단어는 어떻게 발음해요? gets a different particle than 이 단어는 어떻게 발음하나요?, and if that sentence made no sense to you, good — that's the whole lesson. 한테, 에게, and 께 do the exact same job (mark who something goes to), but picking the wrong one is like texting your professor in all lowercase with no punctuation. Not wrong, exactly. Just tells them something about you.

Same job, three registers

All three particles mean "to [a person]." They attach to whoever is on the receiving end of an action — never to places, never to things. That distinction matters because Korean has a separate particle, 에, for locations (학교에 가요, not 학교한테 가요). People get 한테/에게/께. Places get 에. Mixing them up is one of the fastest tells of a shaky beginner.

If you learn Korean mostly from textbooks, you'll meet 에게 first and assume it's the default. It's backwards from how Koreans actually talk: 한테 is the one you'll hear a hundred times a day, and 에게 is the one you'll mostly read. Drop 에게 from your speaking vocabulary entirely for the first year or so — nobody will notice, and you'll sound more natural, not less.

The verbs that actually need this particle

한테/에게/께 aren't decorative — they only show up with a specific family of verbs where something crosses from one person to another: giving, telling, sending, calling. Think of it as the transfer-verb family. If the action moves an object, a message, or a signal from you to someone else, that someone else takes this particle.

Outside this family, most verbs don't want 한테/에게 at all. "I met him" is 그를 만났어요, not 그한테 만났어요 — 만나다 (meet) treats the other person as a direct object, not a receiver. The test is simple: does the verb send something toward a person? Give, tell, send, call, teach, write (a letter to someone), ask — yes. Meet, like, help, know — no, those use a different particle or none at all.

Going the other direction: 한테서 / 에게서

Flip the arrow and you need "from a person," not "to." Korean does this by bolting 서 onto the end: 한테서, 에게서. 형한테서 선물을 받았어요 — "I received a gift from my brother." Same particle family, opposite direction, one extra syllable.

Here's the part that trips people up when they start listening to real conversations: in casual speech, that 서 drops constantly. 형한테 선물 받았어 sounds completely normal — the 받다 (receive) already tells you direction, so the 서 becomes optional decoration Koreans skip when they're talking fast. In writing, and especially in anything formal, put it back: 에게서 without the 서 (just 에게) can technically still work by context, but 에게서 is the correct, unambiguous form.

께 doesn't travel alone — it drags 드리다 with it

께 is the honorific version, used for anyone senior enough to require 존댓말: grandparents, parents (in many families), teachers, your boss, a stranger's elderly relative. But here's the part textbooks gloss over — swapping 한테 for 께 without also upgrading the verb sounds off. 부모님께 선물을 줬어요 is grammatically fine but socially clumsy, like writing a thank-you card in Comic Sans. The honorific particle wants an honorific verb to match: 드리다 (the humble, respectful form of 주다) instead of plain 주다.

The same swap applies to speaking: 말하다 becomes 말씀드리다 when 께 is in the sentence (할머니께 말씀드렸어요, not 할머니께 말했어요 — that second one isn't wrong exactly, just under-dressed for the occasion). This is also why you'll never see 께서 used casually — it's the honorific subject marker, the mirror image of 께, reserved for when the senior person is the one doing the action: 할머니께서 오셨어요 ("Grandmother has arrived").

Watch it work in a real exchange

This is the kind of message you actually get, not a textbook drill — three particles, one conversation, zero effort to notice it happening if you already know the pattern.