Your First Hanja Guide 한자를 알면 한국어가 쉬워진다

by TalkToMeInKorean

Understanding Chinese Characters Makes Korean Easy! 한자를 알면 한국어가 쉬워진다! Your First Hanja Guide is for anyone who wants to improve their Korean vocabulary by learning Hanja. (Thousands of Korean words used in daily conversation are based on Traditional Chinese characters, called Hanja.) Learning Hanja will not only help you read words that are actually written in Chinese characters, but also will help you expand your Korean vocabulary. Having read this book, you will find yourself understanding unfamiliar and complicated Korean words that you couldn’t recognize before. Book Mp3 audio files can be downloaded at TalkToMeInKorean

Genres: Nonfiction, China

352 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2018

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was in high school I took a semester of etymology, the study of the origin of words. We focused on English words from the Latin and Greek elements and while I considered myself rather good at reading and was interested with language from an early age, it really opened a door to understanding what a word meant if I just broke it down into pieces if I knew what all the pieces meant. If you learn en (in/within) -cephal (head/brain) -itis (inflammation), it is all from Greek, so encephalitis literally means inflammation in the brain. So the same can be said for all the Chinese roots that Korean comes from.
Now I don't think I will be learning Chinese itself anytime soon BUT as much as I'm enjoying Korean it is super interesting to see how the Sino-Korean words are formed from such complex Chinese characters. And while it seems similar at first once you start to read a whole word or sentence (and the more words you learn) you get a little lightbulb moment especially if you can only remember one syllable's origin.
Just a few examples from 신 (body). 망 + 신 (fail + body) = shame! 출+ 신 (to be born/go out + body) = origin! 대 + 신 (substitute + body) = instead! 그냥 재미있는 것 같아요! (I just think it's fun!) If I keep having fun maybe one day I'll be able to be considered an advanced learner. I don't want to say fluent because I really think no one is fluent in any language. You have a native tongue and a second tongue (or third, fourth, etc) but even with our own native tongue we learn new things every day even well into adulthood, especially because language itself is always evolving. So we're always learning all the time. And I look forward to it!

[Dana]

대박 👍🏻

[Heejung · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very useful beginner's guide to hanja.

If you're learning Korean, I recommend learning some basic hanja. Yes, you can definitely get by knowing nothing but hangul, but knowledge of hanja adds that extra layer of comprehension. You really start to understand why certain words are the way they are. It makes it easier to memorize vocabulary and enhances your general knowledge of the language.

Each page is basically like this:
- a hanja character (aka Chinese character)
- the meaning of the character
- the breakdown/etymology (if there is one)
- stroke order
- a list of Korean words derived from the hanja character
- a couple example sentences in Korean

Along with a quiz at the end of each unit/chapter.

I've been going through it for several months, one page at a time. It's been pretty relaxed studying, as I'm going for passive recognition rather than being able to perfectly write each character from memory, but it's been a great experience.

[Boburzod · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this book as much as I hate Chinese communism for their human rights violence to Uyghur (위구르) people. But it's helpful to learn good old Korean

[Nguyet Minh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Một cuốn sách tốt về Hán Hàn và từ vựng tiếng Hàn được sử dụng nhiều. Gồm nhóm gốc từ vựng, nghĩa, hướng dẫn cách viết chữ Hán, thú vị nhất là phần xẻ nghĩa chữ Hán theo mô tả tượng hình, bộ thủ Hán cổ và sơ đồ các từ liên kết với nhau như thế nào.

[Piper Winchester · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another pretty and useful book.
I learnt a lot of words more than the hanja but that's OK.