🇰🇷 Lesson 16: Causative Verbs

Ask any parent of a toddler to describe their evening and you'll hear a list of things done to and for a small person: I fed her, bathed her, put her in pajamas, read to her, and put her to sleep. In Korean, almost every verb in that sentence is a special kind of verb:

먹이다, 입히다 and 재우다 are causative verbs: "make or help someone do (or be) something". Last lesson, the passive took the doer away. The causative adds a new doer, the causer. Parents, teachers and bosses use these verbs all day, and learning them turns a whole domain of family life into natural Korean.

🧠 The Mental Model: Adding a Puppeteer

Picture the original sentence as a small scene: 아기가 자요 ("the baby sleeps"). The causative puts a puppeteer above the scene: 엄마가 아기를 재워요 ("Mom puts the baby to sleep"). The new causer becomes the subject, and everyone who was already in the scene moves down one slot.

Compare the passive: 문이 닫혔어요 has one participant fewer than 문을 닫았어요. The causative 재우다 has one participant more than 자다. Passive and causative move in opposite directions, even though they often share the same suffixes.

🧩 The Suffixes

As with the passive, causative forms are lexical. You learn them as words, and many verbs have no suffix causative at all (가다, 오다, 만나다, 배우다, 하다-verbs). There are more suffixes than for the passive, and some of them attach to adjectives too: 높다 → 높이다 "raise".

-이-, -히-, -리-, -기- (shared with the passive)

-우-, -구-, -추- (causative only)

The -우- forms mostly hide an -이- as well: 자 + 이 + 우 → 재우다, 타 + 이 + 우 → 태우다, 서 + 이 + 우 → 세우다, 크 + 이 + 우 → 키우다. That's why the vowel changes. -구- is rare (달구다 and 일구다 "to cultivate land" are about the only ones you'll meet). One more irregular pair is worth knowing: 없다 → 없애다 "get rid of" (벌레를 없애다, 스트레스를 없애다).

🔁 Double Duty (Again): Is It Passive or Causative?

In Lesson 15 you saw that 보이다, 업히다, 안기다, 읽히다, 감기다, 씻기다 (and the look-alikes 들리다, 걸리다) can be either passive or causative. The test is simple: count the participants and look for 을/를.

🎭 When the Meaning Moves On: Lexicalised Causatives

Many causatives have grown into independent words, and their everyday meaning is often not "make someone X". Learn these as vocabulary:

🧑‍🍼 Lexical Causative vs -게 하다

Any verb, even one with no suffix causative, can be made causative with -게 하다: stem + 게 하다. So many verbs have two causatives, and they don't mean quite the same thing.

This is a strong tendency, not an absolute rule. 선생님이 학생들에게 책을 읽혔어요 is a lexical causative, yet it's clearly indirect, because the students do the reading. The more physical the help, the more likely you'll hear the suffix form. The more it's an instruction or permission, the more likely -게 하다.

The many faces of -게 하다

The causee with -게 하다 is flexible: 아이에게 공부하게 했어요, 아이를 공부하게 했어요 and 아이가 공부하게 했어요 all occur. 에게/한테 and 을/를 are the most common in speech.

📋 시키다: "Have Someone Do It"

시키다 is the causative partner of 하다. It works in two ways:

🤲 Causative + -아/어 주다

Causatives combine with -아/어 주다 all the time to make polite favours. Many high-frequency requests are built this way:

🤔 Which One? Three Ways to Make Someone Do Something

💬 Dialogue: Picking Up the Kids From Grandma

Look at 신게 했어 against 신기다. Grandma didn't put Minho's shoes on (that would be 신겼어). She let him do it himself, and that's why the shoes ended up on the wrong feet. The choice of causative tells the whole story. Notice also 좌우가 바뀌다, a passive from last lesson.

🌏 Culture Note — "뭐 시켜요?": Among Korean parents, one of the most common questions is 애들 뭐 시켜요?, literally "What do you make your kids do?", meaning "What classes are your kids taking?" Typical answers are 피아노 시켜요, 태권도 시켜요, 수영 시켜요. The phrase reflects how central after-school academies (학원) are to Korean childhood, a system often discussed under the name 교육열 ("education fever"). Another causative runs through Korean family life: 먹이다. Grandparents measure love in how much they feed you, and "더 먹어" never really means "if you want".

📰 Reading: A Working Mom's Morning

A blog post in 해요체. Count the causatives, both the suffix type and the -게 하다 type.

✏️ Practice

🧠 Check Your Understanding

Two lessons in a row of lexical verb lists is a lot. If you catch yourself mixing up 입혔어요 and 입었어요, take it as progress: you're noticing a difference that didn't exist for you a week ago. Put the family verbs (먹이다, 입히다, 씻기다, 재우다, 깨우다, 태우다) into your SRS reviews first. They are the high-frequency core.

❓ Common Questions

🔮 Looking Ahead

The passive and causative lessons were about who does what. Lesson 17: Remembering & Witnessing: -더- is about how you know. Korean has a special marker for things you personally saw or experienced in the past: 그 식당 맛있더라고요 ("I found that restaurant delicious"), 제가 자주 가던 카페 ("the café I used to go to"). It comes with a famous restriction on using it about yourself, and a couple of interesting exceptions.