Hanja
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Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation. Hanja-mal or hanja-eo refers to words which can be written with hanja, and hanmun 한문, 漢文 refers to Classical Chinese writing, although "hanja" is sometimes used loosely to encompass these other concepts. Because hanja never underwent major reform, they are almost entirely identical to traditional Chinese and kyūjitai characters. Only a small number of hanja characters are modified or unique to Korean. By contrast, many of the Chinese characters currently in use in Japan (kanji) and Mainland China have been simplified, and contain fewer strokes than the corresponding hanja characters.
Hanja Lessons
- Important 한자
- Important 한자 2
- Important 한자 3
- Cheonjamun "Thousand Character Classic"
- Writing Hanja
- Beginners 한자
- Intermediate 한자
- Advanced 한자
Hanja By Level
With English interpretation of Korean meanings, and supplemental meanings. (needs to be reformatted)
- Level 8 51 baby hanja, learned in first grade.
- Level 7 102 elementary school
- Level 6 142 elementary school
- Level 5 184 elementary school
- Level 4I 313 getting harder
- Level 4II 232 getting harder
- Level 3II 357 middle/high school
- Level 3I 414 middle/high school
- Level 2 539 college, scholarly
- Level 1 1151 college, scholarly++
- Level 0 4000+ off the test
Hanja characters
Misc
- Common Hanja used in names
FAQ
What is the point in learning Hanja?
A great deal of Korean words are made up of hanja. Learning the hanja will allow you to memorize the words faster. It's like knowing Latin root words in English. Knowing the root of a word can help you understand its meaning and remember it later. This will also serve you well in other countries. If your visual memory is strong, the hanja you learn in Korea can be found (with some differences) in Japan, China and Taiwan. Thus even a limited grasp of hanja is useful when traveling in Asia. For example, numbers for dates, times and prices.
There are also a lot of hanja the average person is expected to know, for example man (男) and woman (女), so a door might be labeled with the hanja characters on a rest room door. This would be a good time to know hanja so you don't walk into the wrong bathroom! For real life images of hanja in use, see: Category:Hanja images
Does every Hanja character have only one sound representation?
No, some Hanja characters have more than one representation.
In some cases the pronunciation depends on where it appears in a word. For example the character 年(year) is pronounced as 연 if it appears at the beginning of the word, and 년 if it appears elsewhere. See the table below
| Character | Korean representation | Notes | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| 年 (year) | 연, 년 | Pronounced 연 at the beginning of a word, 년 elsewhere |
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| 立 (stand, establish ) | 입, 립 | Pronounced 입 at the beginning of a word, 립 elsewhere |
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| 女 (girl, woman) | 여, 녀 | Pronounced 여 at the beginning of a word, 녀 elsewhere |
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| 不 (negation) | 불, 부 | No rule, some words just use one or the other |
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How do I find a certain character in a dictionary?
Depending on dictionary, there are a number of ways to look up a character in a dictionary, especially electronic ones. They can sometimes be found in the 국어(Language) menu.
Normal look up (한글->한자)
Probably the easiest way to find one in daily use in Korea. This type of look up is for Sino-Korean vocabulary (words of Chinese origin). For example, to see which characters make up the word 무한 (無限), just type in the words as you would in a normal Korean vocabulary look up and the characters should appear next to the Korean word. Some electric dictionaries will have separate look up, one for normal Korean usage, and one that will break down each character and will give meanings for each character.
By Pronunciation/음 (한글->한자)
Type in the pronunciation, for example 무, and anywhere from 10 to 60 different characters will be shown that has that pronunciation. Although a clear demonstration as to the need for Hanja for clarification, this is a fairly tedious way to find characters.
By Stroke/획수 (한자->한글)
For many simple characters and beginners, it is easiest to count the number of strokes and putting that number in. "총획수" indicates that the number of strokes you put in is the number of strokes for the entire character.
By Radical/부수 (한자->한글)
For more complex characters and those familiar with Hanja, it is easiest to look up by number of strokes in the radical (부수획수). Correctly identify the number of strokes in the radical and type that in. Then type the number of strokes in the rest of the character (잔여획수).
