Baby sleeping on a moon with Good Night in Korean Text

How to Say “Goodnight” in Korean – Wish someone a good sleep

In this article, we’ll tell you how to say “goodnight” in Korean.

Imagine you’re in your pajamas, your skincare routine is complete, your teeth are brushed, and you’re ready to sleep. What do you want to say to your roommate, sibling, or spouse before you dose off to dreamland? Of course, you’d like to wish them a good night!ย 

Baby sleeping on a moon with Good Night in Korean Text

Although several phrases will be taught in this lesson, it may be best to pick one formal and one less formal expression and practice trying to use those expressions as much as possible.

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You’ll notice that we use ํ•œ๊ธ€ (Hangeul), the Korean alphabet, throughout this lesson. Learning the Korean alphabet is the best way to learn the language since it trains proper pronunciation and reading in you early on. So it’s a great time to learn the alphabet if you don’t know it already!

All set? Here we go!

Different Ways to Say “Goodnight” in Korean

In English, people normally say “goodnight” or “sweet dreams” to someone to wish them a good night. On the other hand, in Korean, there are plenty of ways to express this phrase, depending on who you are speaking with and when it happens. Let’s know more below!

“Good night” in Korean

Before reading the rest of the article, you can take a look at the video below.

How to Say GOOD NIGHT in Korean | 90 Day Korean

Formal “Goodnight” in Korean

The first way is through its formal version. Below are ways to say “goodnight” when you are talking to someone older or someone of a higher social status than you.

If you have studied “How to Say Goodbye in Korean,” then you will be aware of the word ์•ˆ๋…•ํžˆ (annyeonghi | peacefully) already.

The next word is the formal version of ์ž๋‹ค (jada | to sleep). Both of these are some of the most common Korean words, similar to what is on this list.ย 

How to Say Goodnight in Korean formal

In order to show respect in Korean, you not only need to add ์‹œ into expressions, but you also need to change certain words.ย 

From the lesson on saying goodbye, we learned that ๊ณ„์„ธ์š” (gyeseyo) comes from the honorific version of ์žˆ๋‹ค (itda). Likewise, if you want to say “sleep” in a formal setting, then you should use the word ์ฃผ๋ฌด์„ธ์š” (jumuseyo). Use the expression ์•ˆ๋…•ํžˆ ์ฃผ๋ฌด์„ธ์š” (annyeonghi jumuseyo) when speaking to people who are your senior or who are a generation or two older than you.

Another expression you can use is ํŽธ์•ˆํ•œ ๋ฐค ๋˜์„ธ์š” (pyeonanhan bam doeseyo). This comes from the verb ํŽธ์•ˆํ•˜๋‹ค (pyeonanhada | to be comfortable) and the word ๋ฐค (bam)which means “night” so the expression’s literal meaning is something like “have a comfortable night.”

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Standard “Goodnight” in Korean

Next is the standard version of this phrase.

The verb ์ž๋‹ค (jada) means to sleep, and ์ž˜ (jal) means “well” so the expression ์ž˜ ์ž์š” (jal jayo) means “sleep well.” You can use this expression to say goodnight to somebody. How to Say Goodnight in Korean standard

Informal “Goodnight” in Korean

Lastly, here is how you can say “goodnight” in Korean in an informal way.

This is similar to the standard version, ์ž˜ ์ž์š” (jal jayo). If you are speaking to somebody that you are close to, who is the same age or younger than you, then you can drop the ์š” (yo) from the end of the regular expressions.

How to Say Goodnight in Korean informal

Apart from “good night,” there are other phrases that you can say to someone as a way to say “good night.” Here are some of them.

“Sleep well” in Koreanย 

This phrase, as also mentioned above, can be used to say “goodnight,” but directly means “sleep well” in Korean

What is “Sweet Dreams” in Korean?

Another phrase you often say when greeting someone goodnight is “sweet dreams.” Here’s how you can say it in Korean.

There are several Korean verbs that usually are made up of two separate words. ๊ฟˆ์„ ๊พธ๋‹ค (kkumeul kkuda) is one of these, ๊ฟˆ (kkum) means dream so literally ๊ฟˆ ๊พธ๋‹ค (kkum kkuda) could be translated as “dream dreams,” but you should see the two words together as an expression meaning “to dream.” ์ข‹์€ (joeun) means “good this expression means something like “dream some good dreams.”

Use these expressions with people who are of a similar age and rank, but you don’t know too well.

For this version, we just dropped the ์š” (yo) if you will say this to someone you’re close with.ย 

“Did you sleep well?” in Korean

If you see somebody the next day and want to ask them if they slept soundly or they slept well, here’s what you can say.

ย The verb ์ฃผ๋ฌด์‹œ๋‹ค (jumusida) has been put into the past tense and asked as a question forming ์•ˆ๋…•ํžˆ ์ฃผ๋ฌด์…จ์–ด์š”? (annyeonghi jumusyeosseoyo).

How to Say Goodnight in Korean - Did you sleep well

“Good Morning” in Korean

Apart from ์•ˆ๋…•ํžˆ ์ฃผ๋ฌด์…จ์–ด์š”? (annyeonghi jumusyeosseoyo), you can also use these words to greet someone in the morning in Korean:

You can use ์ž˜ ์žค์–ด์š”? (jal jasseoyo), which is the standard form of “good morning” with your fellow housemates or if you’re traveling with someone who is older than you.

์ž˜ ์žค์–ด? (jal jasseo) is informal, so you can use this with people the same age or close friends.

“See you tomorrow” in Korean

In addition to knowing how to say “good night,” you may wish to use the expression “see you tomorrow” (๋‚ด์ผ ๋ด์š” – naeil bwayo) in certain situations too.

“Sleep” in Korean

Now, how do you say “sleep” in Korean? The word “sleep” can be used as a noun or a verb.ย 

“Sleep” in Korean (Verb)

There are three ways say “sleep” in Korean as a verb. These are ์ž๋‹ค (jada), ์ž ์ž๋‹ค (jamjada), and ์ž ์„ ์ž๋‹ค (jameul jada).ย 

Sample sentences:

ํ˜ธํ…”์—์„œ ์ž๋ ค๊ณ  ํ•ด์š”. (ย hotereseo jaryeogo haeyo)

I’m going to sleep in a hotel.

์•„๊ธฐ๊ฐ€ ์ž ์„ ์ž๊ณ  ์žˆ์–ด์š”. (agiga jameul jago isseoyo.)

The baby is sleeping.

์ž ์ž๋Š” ๋™์•ˆ ๊ฟˆ์„ ๊ฟจ์–ด์š”? (jamjaneun dongan kkumeul kkwosseoyo?)

Did you dream while you were sleeping?

“Sleep” in Korean (Noun)

If used as a noun, you can say “sleep” with the words ์ž  (jam) and ์ˆ˜๋ฉด (sumyeon).

Sample sentences:

Here are some sample sentences using ์ˆ˜๋ฉด (sumyeon):

์งง์€ ์ˆ˜๋ฉด ์‹œ๊ฐ„์€ ๊ฑด๊ฐ•์— ๋‚˜๋น ์š”. (jjalbeun sumyeon siganeun geongange nappayo.)

Short sleep times are bad for your health.

์ตœ๊ทผ ์ˆ˜๋ฉด ๋ถ€์กฑ์œผ๋กœ ๊ณ ํ†ต ๋ฐ›๋Š” ์‚ฌ๋žŒ๋“ค์ด ๋Š˜๊ณ  ์žˆ์–ด์š”. (choegeun sumyeon bujogeuro gotong banneun saramdeuri neulgo isseoyo.)

Recently, more and more people are suffering from a lack of sleep.

Sample sentences:

Below are sentence examples using ์ž  (jam).

๋‚˜๋Š” ์ž ์ด ๋งŽ์•„์š”. (naneun jami manayo.)

I sleep a lot.

์ž ์ด ๋ถ€์กฑํ•˜๋ฉด ์ง‘์ค‘๋ ฅ์ด ๋–จ์–ด์ ธ์š”. (jami bujokamyeon jipjungnyeogi tteoreojyeoyo.)

If you lack sleep, you lose concentration.

“Oversleep” in Korean

The word for “oversleep” in Korean is ๋Šฆ์ž  (neutjam). This can also mean “sleep in.”

If you have noticed, the word ์ž  (jam) for “sleep” is used in this word.

Sample sentence:

์˜ค๋Š˜์€ ์ฃผ๋ง์ด๋‹ˆ๊นŒ ๋Šฆ์ž  ์ž๋„ ๋ผ์š”. (oneureun jumarinikka neutjam jado dwaeyo.)

Today is the weekend, so you can sleep in.

“Nap” in Korean

You can say “nap” in Korean asย ๋‚ฎ์ž  (natjam).

Sample sentence:

๊ณ ์–‘์ด๊ฐ€ ๋‚ฎ์ž ์„ ์ž๊ณ  ์žˆ์–ด์š”. (goyangiga natjameul jago isseoyo.)

The cat is taking a nap.

Wrap Up

Now you should have a good understanding of how to say “goodnight” in Korean. If you liked this phrase and want to learn more about the language, check out our complete online resource guide for how to learn Korean. We also have a step-by-step online Korean language program that teaches you how to have a 3-minute conversation in the first 90 days.

์ž˜ ์ž์š” (jal jayo)!

Need more Korean phrases to study? Check out our list of everything you need!

22 thoughts on “How to Say “Goodnight” in Korean – Wish someone a good sleep”

  1. Hello,

    I want to ask a question about ์ข‹์€ ๊ฟˆ ๊ฟ” and ์ข‹์€ ๊ฟˆ ๊ฟ”์š”. You said we can say ์ข‹์€ ๊ฟˆ ๊ฟ” to somebody who we are close to and ์ข‹์€ ๊ฟˆ ๊ฟ”์š” to somebody we are not close to. So, the difference only with the word ์š”?
    Am I right?

    Thank you

    1. The main difference is when we add์š” in the last of the word, it shows that we are using formal way of talking , which we can use to our elders to show respect.

  2. its veryy good im learning fast korean now thank you soooo much and please can tell me a book for lr=earning korean for 10 years old on tunisia please i really need it thank you byeeee

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