Older sister — said only by a man, often to a girlfriend.
A man calls any slightly older woman 누나 — real sister, friend, coworker, or the woman he is dating. Using it on a girlfriend is affectionate and extremely common in dramas. A woman would never say it; she says 언니 instead.
The male counterpart to 언니. Korean kinship words are chosen by the speaker’s gender, not just the listener’s.
Gendered, and not optional. If you are a woman saying this about an older woman, you want 언니 — 누나 will sound like a mistake every time.
Reading a definition isn't the same as saying it to someone. Lingo Kaiava is a voice tutor set to Korean — it uses 누나 the way locals do, corrects you in the moment, and never "fixes" the way real people actually talk into textbook Korean.
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