Do You Need HANJA to Speak Korean? + Interview with Koreans
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
- Hanja (한자) are Chinese characters that Korean originally used to write its language. But due to the creation and popularization of Hangul (한글) it is no longer necessary to memorize how to read it or write it. However, does that mean Hanja is useless for learning Korean? I’ll give my personal opinions on the topic, as well as share the opinions of some native Koreans. The question that I asked Koreans living in Seoul is this: “한자를 잘 아는 게 중요하다고 생각하세요?” (“Do you think that knowing Hanja is important?”).
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Knowing Chinese root words when learning Korean is like knowing Latin root words when learning English. You don't need, but it helps.
this comment is to both mason and billy. though what mason says rings true i feel that knowing hanja is somewhat necessary. me being a full-blooded korean born in the states that learned korean from my parents, when listening to any kind of news or reading newspapers or reading certain reading material i have no idea what's being said based on the vocabulary being used (which ends up being hanja). so knowing the hanja and learning the han-mun will definitely help in understanding korean literature and media. for the natives saying that it's not important, i do understand what they're saying but i liken it to a U.S native who's not very edu-macated and listens to the news and understands maybe 80-90% and the 10% ends up being very important tid-bits.(10% being more complicated words that are latin and romance language based words that we don't use in everyday life)
Better comparisions: knowing sanskrit or arabic to understand better iranian or kurdish, or knowing iranian and kurdish (and armenian) to understand turkish, or knowing etruscan to know latin...
Yeah, except that Latin is no longer used and Chinese characters are.
The key difference here is that Latin itself was written with an alphabetical system and it barely has any homophones. Chinese loan words have lots of homophones, especially after modern korean lost tonal distinctions. For example, 防水 放水 mean “insulate from water” and “put in water” respectively, both spelled as 방수 in hangul.
That is a really bad comparison. Hanja is indeed from China but Koreans adapted Hanji to their own
I am certified level 5 in Hanja here in Korea and I can testify that it will make Korean so, so much easier. You can understand words without ever studying them because you know the meanings of the characters that make up the words. However, Hanja is something you might want to tackle after Korean is comfy. Either way learn it little by little and you will notice the difference. Good video!
마이 쿨 방송 There’s levels in Hanja?? I didn’t know that existed
Emmy Tang There are some official or private Hanja vocabulary tests held in Korea. Low level test requires people to memorize Hanjas which are relatively simple in both shape and meaning. (Higher level = Hanja characters harder to memorize)
Michael Cai
I respect your opinion buddy... but Modern China ERASED MOST OF THIER CULTURAL MAJESTICS(such as books,memorials, sculptures etcs) IN 1960...(feat. MAO)
And we Koreans are fighting for our cultures to survive!
PLUS I love many Han poet too =-)
Harry E Not most but still a lot though. That was not necessarily a bad thing because we were painfully reminded to preserve and flourish our culture.
Sounds like you have tips to make Chinese people learn Korean much easier.
As a Chinese speaker, it surprises me how similar the words sound in Korean and Chinese. It's like hearing some one speaking Chinese with a huge tongue.
Bochao Zhang sameee but it sounded more like someone speaking a chinese dialect to me 😂 (singaporean chinese here)
They don't use the 4 tones though?
@@nickfleming3719 some chinese dialect don't use the 4 tones too
@@nickfleming3719 difference dialects have difference number tones. Dialects are most official tones of different dynasty
Bochao Zhang if you know I think hokkien or Hakka it will be much similar
i like how he casually flies to korea whenever he needs to interview people
Hanja is very easy for Chinese speakers. We don't need to memorize them particularly and knowing hanja actually can help Chinese learners to memorize the vocabulary much more easily. lol
of course hanja is easy for chinese speakers. hanja is based off of chinese.. that's like a person who speaks latin fluently and says yes root words for english is easy for us latin speakers. duh! that's what it's based on!
只是学词语会容易一点，语法差别就大了
Ambarvalia あむばるわりあ And you have very similar grammar
Alexander Berman 其实中文的变化非常大，现代中文跟古代中文没法比。而且古文更像日文和韩文接近。比如“先生”（선생님)在粤语还是有“老师”的意思而在今天的普通话中并失去了这一点。
Zhenzhi YIN
“任” 闽南语读 “lim”。我发现闽南语和吴语还是比较接近的，“人”在闽南语和吴语也都念“侬”
Must be nice being able to ignore it, in Japanese you can’t survive without Kanji...笑
Drew・ドリュー hahhai
Nowadays it's just 草
laugh in chinese xiao
Recreate your Japanese alphabet as well and we all good. XD
I bet I could read Japanese in Hangul and understand it.
@@CyanideOwl 보쿠하이마카이태이마수
You can't write japanese in hangul because you wouldn't be able to use kanji. Right now you don't know if i wrote "I'm writing" or "I'm drawing" (書 / 描)
oh my god.... I'm a native Korean and I am subscribing this guy.
Agreed! His pronounciations are perfect!
Ok... I'm Chinese. (From Hong Kong)
Of course, I know Hanja.
It is very useful for me to study Korean by remembering the corresponding Hangul and Hanja. Especially when the pronunciations are so alike. (If you say 시간 in Hong Kong they don't realise you're speaking Korean. The pronunciations are literally the same.)
Even some of the Hanja combinations are not Chinese, it is very easy to guess the meaning of a certain phrase.
For example: Bed (침대, 寢台) This Hanja combination doesn't happen in Chinese. But I know 寢 means "Sleep" and 台 means something like "a stage" (More specifically a flat surface above the ground.) then 寢台 means "a flat surface for sleeping" that means a bed.
Wesley Chow It’s 寢臺. Not 寢台. 台 is pronounced differently; it’s 태. I know that 台 is a shortened? form but it’s still wrong.
죄송합니다. 우리 중국어의 세게에서 台와 臺는 똑같은 것이니까 이 잘못을 했는데요...
Wesley Chow “똑같은 것이니까” X “똑같은 것이라서” O 여기서 ‘니까’ 쓰면 안 돼요.
근데 솔직히 다 알아봐요. 한국에서도 臺를 台라고 써도 안 될 건 없어요. 어차피 요즘 한자 잘 안 쓰는 추센데.
In Chinese, 台 is the simplified version of 臺.
김상윤 台 is the 異體字 of 臺，both mean the same thing. The “태” pronunciation in Korean refers to a different meaning of 台 《唐韻》土來切《集韻》《韻會》湯來切，音胎。《廣韻》三台星。亦作能。《周禮·春官·大宗伯司中註》司中三能，三階也。《疏》武陵太守星傳云：三台一名天柱，上台司命爲太尉，中台司中爲司徒，下台司祿爲司空，史漢皆作三能。In Middle Chinese, it’s clear that it also has the pronunciation 대 《集韻》堂來切，音臺.
When learning a language totally unrelated to your own, vocabulary is really difficult to learn because you have to start from scratch. Hanja really makes it a lot easier, because now you can connect the words and learn them a lot faster. It really helped me out a lot
Knowing Chinese characters along with Japanese and Chinese pronunciations makes it easier to remember vocabulary for me, so while it's not necessary, I appreciate having the option to use knowledge that I already know to speed up my Korean learning.
Von's Valiant Ventures Korean and Japanese at the same time yay
I am a korean living in japan for 5years. Now i am able to read and write chinese characters as Im living in Japan. When i was in korea, i was barely able to write chinese characters except for easy ones and my name. But still i was able to read much more because i studied some basic chinese characters at middle and high school as a regular course. Also, one of my teachers made us to write 2 chinese characters many times every day at elementary school, easy ones from kids newspapers.
I think when you study korean, you do not need to know how to write or read chinese characters. But just understand that many korean vocabs are combination of chinese characters and each chinese character can be read in 1 way, only exceptions are pronounced in 2 or more ways. If you understand it and try to memorize korean vocab, i think you will somehow find a pattern in words which will naturally make you understand which sounds means what meaning.
In conclusion, by memorizing many korean vocab you will naturally understand and memorize chinese characters (the matching of sounds and meaning, Not how to write nor read). And it would be enough to live in Korea. And thats how young koreans do.
Just a side note: newspapers had many chinese characters until 1990's, so old korean people do know many many chinese characters.
I can give you two reasons: Japanese and Chinese.
one more reason: Vietnamese
hahaha greatgreat Vietnamese chu nom is way different and I think there is less sino words in daily Vietnamese convo anymore
@Kai ii 南國山河, Vietnam's first declaration of independence was written in Hanzi and I believe Chinese, Korean and Japanese can read this. In the past, Vietnamese only used Chu Nom for daily communication and only used Hanzi for document and literature.
@@HS-jt2fl 南国山河，meaning The Kingdom in the South. Am I right? I'm Chinese.
hi can i ask what’s the connection of it to japanese? thank you😊
火=fire
炎=flame or infection
川=stream
人=Human
木=tree
本=root
末=tip
米=rice
草=grass
日=sun
月=moon
国/國=Country
口=mouth
齿=tooth
舌=tongue
耳=Ear
鼻=nose
目=eye
田=grainfield
上=up
下=down
山=mountain
兵=soldier
手=hand
足=foot
Some easiest characters which can be memorize by connecting the pictograms with their meanings and used between CKJ Northeast Asian HkanJzia Users.
Naerok Omelas lol i learnt these in 6th grade when i studied mandarin and i only remember 7 out of the list you wrote
Pure Korean / Sino-Korean
火 bul, hwa
炎 bulkot, yŏm
川 nae, chŏn
人 saram, in
木 namu, mok
本 mit, pon
末 kŭt, mal
米 ssal, mi
草 pul, cho
日 hae, il
月 tal, wol
國 nara, kuk
口 ip, ku
齒 i, chi
舌 hyŏ, sŏl
耳 kwi, i
鼻 ko, bi
目 nun, mok
田 pat, jŏn
上 wi, sang
下 arae, ha
山 moi, san
兵 ?, byŏng
手 son, su
足 tari, jok
@@alexfriedman2047 저도 한국어를 배우고 있어요. 그리고 저도 아직 잘 못 해요. 매일 많이 공부하고 싶지만 시간이 없어요. 한글 알지만 한자를 읽지 못 해요. 한자를 정말 알고 싶지만 어려워요 ;-; 한국어를 배워서 한국에서 살고 싶어요. 그런데 Alex Friedman 씨의 한국어 아주 좋아요, 화이팅! :)
Naerok Omelas 差矣，明眼人。
Naerok Omelas 小姐, 我看不懂
이 글은 國漢文混用體로 敍述했습니다. 이러한 韓國語文體는 舊時代的인 形式을 取하고 있기에, 韓國人들은 漢字智識이 아마 이 글을 理解할 수 없을 것입니다.
韓國語를 學習하기 爲해 漢字는 必要하진 않습니다. 허나 新聞이나 論文 등 高級語彙를 多數 使用하는 글을 읽을 時엔 漢字가 必須라 할 수 있습니다.
This is old-Korean style which mixes Hangul and Hanja. Because nowadays Korean don't know Hanja well, maybe they can't understand this.
You don't have to learn Hanja for learning Korean. But to read newspapers or articles, sometimes it needs.
Jaehyuk Lee Not cannot understand it，because they don't want to admit to use chinese culture like japan.
CC lin Are you chinese???
All Korean admits korea is in same cultural area with China Japan Vietnam Taiwan N.korea (also called as 漢字文化圈). but like Vietnamese, Korean also can be written in only Hangul(Korean letter).
Korean admits Korean also needs 漢字 sometimes. Many Koreans know 漢字, too. they just don't use in life. that's all.
知識 not 智識
the thing is vietnam was colonized by France in 근대 history. so they use France alphabet（latin letter） instead of Chinese character(Hanja). In 近代 you guys be colonized by japan, right? so, you should write 國漢文混用體 ,as same as your suzerain state(保護国の日本).just like vietnam admire French modernization. you should use 和漢文混用体 to show a great respect to japan which gives your country modernization , civilization and industrialization.
Kim won Korean mixed script has nothing to do with Japanese colonialism. It started since the invention of hunminjeongeum itself. The hangul version of hunminjeongeum was written in mixed script.
Although I don’t speak Korean and I do speak some Japanese and can read a good number of Kanji (the Japanese word for Hanzi or Hanja) and I don’t find it that difficult to learn.
I read somewhere, that a lot of this perception of Hanja being difficult stems from propaganda spread by pro-Hangul nationalists. Also not mentioned in this video are people who are “pro-Hanja” and want to increase hanja learning and usage due to the increased importance of China as a growing super power.
I wish that the maker of this video interviewed more older people, who lived during a time when Hanja, in combination with Hangul was used.
Also, it was not mentioned in the video, but Hanja is a MUST for certain fields like law, science and Korean history.
Also, Hanja is a traditional mark of learning and intelligence, since its relatively harder to learn and increases one’s vocabulary and understanding of Korean.
And well, how are you going to explain the Hanja 中韓美日 to someone who does not know Hanja. Just by my knowledge of Japanese Kanji, I know this is a short hand way of saying “China, Korea, American and Japan”.
I think Hanja is definitely useful (and perhaps should be used more in daily life)...just my (unpopular) opinion of mine.
Same. The Hanja really lets me visualise words better than Hangul, as a learner of Chinese and Japanese.
Hanja is said to have been difficult to learn among the common folk, thus literacy rates during King Sejong's reign was abysmally low. This is probably the single most cited reason for the creation of Hangeul. Hell, it was the reason given to us in Korean class.
I get both sides, really. The invention of a native writing system for the language is better moving forward, but that shouldn't have to be mutually exclusive with maintaining tradition. I mean, Sino-Korean numerals are maintained just fine. They're necessary for proper communication, even.
I just find your name Arabic
@imwithstupid086 Education and educational technology are so much more advanced and available these days, that that excuse no longer holds any weight.
Most Korean People think that Easy is the virtue and the complection is the evil.
But I believe if you can do the KPop dance, you cannot say Hanja is difficult. If Hanja is difficult as hell, then the Chinese ordinary people must be genious.
But you cannot force a writing system. If Only Park knew that China will rise and people will not use Typewriters...
중,고등학교 같은 경우 아직까지 선생님들께서 칠판에 한자 적어주십니다. 물론 그 빈도수가 많지 않지만 선생님에 따라 즐겨 쓰시는 분들도 계셔요. 그 중 한분이 저희 영어선생님이신데, 올해 첫 수업부터 영어의 특징을 알려주신다며 多意語, 品詞등의 단어를 한자로 쓰셨고 평소에 '목적어'라는 단어를 적으실 때 그냥 目이라고만 적으십니다.
또, 사람 인원 셀 때도 名을 쓰시는 분들이 정말 많고, 날짜 쓰실 때도 한자 쓰시는 선생님들 정말 많습니다. 그리고 갑자기 기억난 건데 저희 반 분필 손잡이?에도 1用(1반용)이라고 써있더라고요.
漢(汉)字 hàn zì (China Taiwan etc)
漢(汉)字 hon3 zi6 (Hongkong etc)
漢字 kan ji かん じ (Japanese)
漢字 han ja 한 자 (Korean)
漢字 hán tự (Vietnamese)
East asia : Western contries
Chinese character : Latin words
Classical written Chinese : Latin
Mandarin Chinese : Italian
Cantonese : Romanian
Hokkien : Spanish
Hakka : Portuguese
Sino-Kor/Jpn/Vietnamese words :
Latin-based Germanic/Slavic words
嗯…好像不太是这么回事儿🤔
you are so correct!
From a Taiwanese person's standpoint, Hanja is extremely useful in terms of associating characters to syllables in Sino-Korean words in Korean. Most Korean Hanja is unchanged, closely resembling the Traditional charcter set more than the Simplified character set, so very few additional characters need to be learned. Knowing Hanja helps me to guess words in Korean, and infer words in Korean that I would otherwise know in Mandarin. For example, if I knew that 學校 = 학교 (school in both Mandarin and Korean), and 先生 = 선생 ("mister/teacher" in Mandarin, teacher in Korean), you can reasonably guess that 學生, which means "student" in Mandarin, would probably be pronounced 학생 in Korean, and would probably mean student, or something similar in Korean.
It comes in pretty handy if I don't know a noun in Korean, I just guess using the Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters (usually 1:1, like Mandarin). If I need to use a Mandarin verb or adjective, no problem, just add 하다.
verb example: 選擇 means choose, just add 하다, to get 선택 해요.
adjective example: 勇敢 means brave, just add 하다, to get 용감 한.
Since Korean is 60% Sino-Korean vocabulary, this is a very easy method to decipher/reasonably guess most of the Korean language. This doesn't always work, since there also exist Sino-Korean phrases derived from Japanese, or Classical Chinese.
Another problem Hanja solves is with disambiguation of homophones, such as 사과, which can mean either apple (沙果) or apology (謝過).
Drew Tsun ThanKS
'沙果', sand apples? Sorry, I am a Singaporean Chinese.
As someone who speaks practically no Korean but can hold a Japanese conversation rather Well, i will say that hanja (漢字) are incredible for retaining vocab. For example, the word for mother tongue in Japanese is 母国語 (bokokugo). This is difficult to pronounce for me, and is uncommon. But i can remember it by visualising the look of the word. Seeing in my mind "mother" + "land" + "language" I can peice together how to pronounce bc I know to read 母 as bo, 国 as koku and 語 as go. So my mind creates the word 母国語
Also bragging rights
I think you can also use 母語(bogo) for mother tongue instead of 母国語. The literal translation of the latter would mean mother country language, but is also used to mean mother tongue anyway
The word for mother tongue in Korean is also 母國語 and it is pronounced as mo-guk-eo(more like 'uh' tho)
When I visited some museums in Korea years ago I could read and understand most of the ancient writings but the Koreans themselves need to read the Korean translations as westerners need to read the English translations
@A C I wish all of us East Asians got along more. I can only dream. 😔
I speak japanese, then learned Chinese. Starting korean now and honestly is more difficult to me precisely because of the lack of kanji/hanzi in written language learning new words with kanji/hanzi is easier it makes sense, with only you only read sounds and alot of korean words sound the same.....
I really think Korean should pick Kanji up because they will have trouble understand their own language without kanji... Kanji can help them to figure out the meaning of their words..especially those words that have the same pronunciation.
Me Chinese think the same when learning Korean that you see tens of different words have the same pronunciation but no hanja helps to distinguish
@@pepegafroggy1133 They even are hard to understand their historical books without hanja
We have less homonyms than you Japanese. Because of this, Koreans do not suffer from distinguishing homonyms through the context in our daily lives. However, it may be difficult for foreigners learning Korean for the first time and i understand. That doesn't mean that you guys need to worry about us. And as you mentioned, when a clear distinction is needed, such as in the law, we still use hanja. It hasn't totally disappeared at all.
Some Korean sino words actually sounds more like Cantonese compare to Mandarin I guess (? Like a lot of “ong” “o” sounds) My high school Chinese teacher told me that ancient Chinese actually sounds more like Cantonese compared to Mandarin, especially in the old eras more than a thousand years ago. That’s when the ancient Korea first interacted with the Chinese culture.
Yes, I'd agree. I studied Cantonese for a couple of months once, and I was surprised by how many words sounded more similar than Mandarin. In fact, originally Sino Korean words (and their sounds) used in Korean came mainly from 700~1000 AD, from northern Chinese dialects. That was what's known as Late Middle Chinese, during the Tang-period in China. So it's possible those northern Chinese dialects are more similar to modern-day Cantonese than modern-day Mandarin. But my Chinese knowledge is barely anything at all.
@@GoBillyKorean Actually there are so many different especially southern Chinese dialect such as Hakka（客）Hokkien or Min（闽）their sounds even more close to the very ancient old Chinese than Cantonese,But it can not say that represent the ancient Chinese.They also mix lots of local minority folks languages when migrated at that time,just retain part ancient Chinese features,so as Cantonese and Mandarins.i.e. Some old poets rhyemd in Cantonese but others rhymed in Mandarin Hokkien or other dialect system.They absorbed or influenced from other different languages from different areas and periods retain partial characteristics of ancient accent like another languages in the world.
@@GoBillyKorean I am a Cantonese Chinese, a quarter of Hakka people, in fact, Korean is more like Hakka than Cantonese
The Southern Min languages are more similar.
Many Sino-Japanese words ALSO sound more like Cantonese, for the same reason.
As a Korean
1 no problem living in Korea without the knowledge of hanja
2 but after memorizing roughly 2000 of hanjas, my understanding of my own language has been highly improved, particularly reading comprehension.
3 believe every student does not need to be forced to learn hanja except for just a few small number of essential ones.
4 but if I have sons or daughters, I'll press them to learn a bunch of hanji to "enlighten" their verbal brain haha.
@Destroy The CCP The thing about English is that as a kid in America we're taught words that resemble latin, french, german. Latin loanwords is a huge part of our studies.
@Destroy The CCP nice comparison, but, the relationship between hanjia and korean are more then that.
I’ve been learning English for years. Recently I found that many English words come from Latin . Vis- means see;dict-means say; audi-means hear. Finally I know the why the visit,audience and predict the original meanings! So for Korean, kanja is Latin of Asia . Japanese,Vietnamese and Korean vocabulary are made from its.
I have been learning Latin. Spanish words start making sense to me although I have never studied it.
@@dragondale8483 So what’s you mother tongue? Spanish? My mother tongue is Chinese,so it’s hard to remember the long words such as , infrastructures,hepatobiliary, hydrogen sulfide....
@momo cha My mother tong is a dialect of northern China, and I am educated in mandarin. I had the same difficulty as you do/did with long English words. As I studied more about roots, prefixes, suffixes, and infixes, the easier it becomes to speaks/memorize long words. I suggest that you look up long words in web site www.etymonline.com/. This site is very informative. Take ‘infrastructure’ you mentioned, this word can be broken into ‘infra’ + ‘structure’, which means ‘under’ and ‘things put together’, respectively. It matches very well to its equivalent ‘基建‘ in Chinese characters.
The way i see it, it's like knowing the latin or greek roots of French words (I speak French) to better understand them. If you don't know the roots, you understand anyway, but when you have that knowledge there's a better understanding of the words and you can guess what some new words mean. I say French, but it works for other languages too. So I am not too worried about hanja. I'll get to them when I get more time to really study Korean ^^
BleuumScarlett Latin doesn’t have homophones like Chinese loan words. One syllable corresponds to too many meanings which can only be disambiguated by hanja.
But you don’t need to memorize all the characters it’s just taking long time and no use in Korea
Hanja is such an art , it's not just good for Korean learners but also as a writing system it's really beautiful
Wow, 金妍兒Kim yuna's name surprises me as a Chinese, it feels so moving that someone you admire has this familiar connection between you and her.
I love how 화장 means makeup and 화장실 means toilet
I have no knowledge of Korean, but I can guese based on Chinese more or less how they pronunce in Korean. And the extra character means room. Finally, these two words are invented by Japanese....
Makeup room? Ok.. Xd
??? : 화장 / 화장실 ~ rest / restroom. any difference?
@@zhengliu9804 u sure 化妆was a Japanese-made Chinese word? I believed people back then 化妆 too.
Yes makeup room. It was created years and years ago. 실 is the chinese character for room. I was actually so curious about this that I asked my Korean tutor and he said it doesn't mean anything like Makeup room anymore. That is just how it was created. It's not "Girly" to ask 화장실이 어디예요? or anything lol. But there are other ways to say bathroom like 휴게실 or something. I will just say 화장실 it doesn't bother me.
As a native speaker of chinese, I know nothing about korean in advance, but I'm suprised to understand all the meaning of Hanja words mentioned in the video, including the phrase, the words have the same meaning in chinese and even the pronunciations are so similar
I went to Seoul in October. Knowing Chinese, I was able to read some of the ancient texts at the national museum better than most of the locals. It was interesting to see the progression from all hanja to none at all, with hanja gradually being replaced over time.
I know at my university if you do Korean Studies you gotta learn some Hanja in third year, only problem is it seems to be taught pretty rigidly despite being taught by native Koreans. I struggled badly learning Japanese kanji for the same reasons in my first year of university.
If you’re reading this Billy, thanks a lot for making language learning fun. Learned a lot in the time I’ve been watching this channel!
Hi! What I learned from your video is that knowing Hanja helps Korean vocabulary in about the same way that knowing Latin and Greek prefixes, suffixes, and root words helps English vocabulary. And that is very valuable!
That's great content! The most important thing to learn Korean is Hangul.
I think using Korean alphabets is very easy and maybe Japanese should only use katakana and hiragana but because the kanji is so shortened the words I don't think it's too bad either, but to be honest I prefer reading 한글 than reading three types of letters in Japanese, it's very complicated for me. .
@@GeoSeoKwan well it's difficult for Japanese if em not use kanji, Japanese not have much tone like Korean, Besides in Katakana nor hiragana not have specific character that point the tone, as Example
ははははなをみつける those if only write with hiragana, and this if kanji add
母は花を見つける
Even when I don't understand a single word in hangul, I can understand everything with you explaining by just listening to the pronunciation and the looking at the hanja as I know Chinese Chinese......
Well for me as a calligrapher, I think learning hanja might be cool not because it look more beautiful than hangul, but to also to read the ancient texts in korean history.
I lived in Korea for six years, and found that the few semesters of Chinese I had previously was pretty useful.
As for Hanja, for me it's very interesting because I came to learning Korean through Japanese, so I like guessing in which kanji some word could be written, then I check in Naver. And idioms 사자성어 are fun.
Helga Seele
I’m Chinese and I also find it fun when you match a Korean word to its Chinese equivalent. Most of the “사자성어” (四字成語) in Korean comes from Chinese as well, and the stories are almost exactly the same.
Same. I just started Korean words and grammar bc I already knew 한글 for a while, and filtering a lot of the words through Japanese helps a lot. Many words that use 2 kanji or more like 時間、運動、勉強、etc. have direct translations which are 시간, 운동, and 공부 respectively. These Sino-Japanese/Korean words make understanding each other easier.
Helga Seele YeS
Speaking as a non-Korean who lives in works in Korea with decent korean skills, I would say, almost ironically, that as things are currently, learning Hanja is probably more useful for foreign Korean language students than it is for actual native Korean speakers. In my case learning Hanja was the secret sauce that allowed my Korean education to really take off, because I'm terrible at memorizing things at face-value. For examble I struggled with the days of the week for ages and once I learned what the Hanja meant it instantly clicked. For anyone having trouble with Korean vocab (especially if it all sounds really similar to you), I highly recommend studying Hanja especially if you are coming from a non-sino linguistic background. As the video says, you don't necessarily need to learn how to read and write this stuff but just identifying the sounds and word relationships will give you a huge advantage.
i’m glad chinese is my second language now
Great video, Billy. Exactly the information we needed.
I think it was a big mistake to drop Hanja, especially when 60% of the vocabulary, place names, cultural sayings are all based in it. The mixed script from 40s and 50s made more sense. Hangul I do not think was made to completely replace Hanja in every single context, it was there to give people a basis of how to read.
Another advantage of Hanja is an added value to learning Korean: You will start to get large parts of text of other parts of the Sinosphere, Japan and China, which are used by over 1.6 billion people!!!
Chinese is almost everywhere nowadays and it would be very beneficial to learn at least a bit in order to try to survive in a Korean city if we do not have much fluency in the language. We should not see it as something difficult but as a tool to understand Korean faster and learn more vocabulary.
@Jacky Phantom but if u go to temple or historical palace in korea all write in kanji.
Its confuse how the korean read their own history ... haha
Not in Korea. I mean you might see Hanja in temples and Historical stuff, maybe a few on signs.... that is ALL. Korean signs are almost all 100% Hangul. You really don't need to learn it. Also What do you mean Chiense is everywhere?? Everywhere in China and Japan maybe... Not in other countries. Korea , Vietnam for example abolished it.
@Jacky Phantom kanji are very necessary in the Japanese language because there are many words in the Japanese language with identical pronunciation (that is, written in the same way in hiragana) so the kanji are used to specify what you are talking about. However, kanji (Hanja / hanzi) are not much necessary in the Korean language.
@Jacky Phantom Vietnamese here, and actually no one want to get out of the Sinosphere, it's become a part of us that removing it would means to remove a big part of our identity, so bye
@Jacky Phantom and what does modern politics have to do with preservation of traditional culture? Is the use of English words with Latin roots written in the Latin alphabet considered sucking up to France/Spain/Italy/Portugal? No it doesn't. Vietnamese people can acknowledge the influence of Chinese culture on theirs without having to politicise it.
I've put about 9 years into Japanese and now I've been studying Korean for about 4 months and I've noticed that I know a lot of words that people who have studying for a lot longer than me don't. It's so convenient and it allows one to progress faster if they know the hanja so I think it would be extremely beneficial and may save one a lot of time in the future when learning new words if they just learn even a few hundred hanja.
At the moment I think the same as the man with the little girl in his arm. I think that it is good to know hanja, but not when you just started Korean. When you know Korean well, it should be good and fun to start learning Hanja.
(4:05 - 4:40).
I'm learning Hanja in school and I've been learning Korean for a while now. I definitely see the relationship between the two languages' sounds. I think Learning Hanja is a big plus when studying Korean. It's really helpful.
first of all I want to thank you for your efforts to make us better in Korean . About hanja I think that any one who want to understand Korean should learn it but just it's meaning in Korean not Chinese character. 대박 진짜 한국어를 한국 사람들처럼 유창하게 잘 하시네요
Also Learning Hanja is a great headstart if you want to learn Japanese or Chinese
Hanja = One Sleep, it's a secret meaning, only special people will understand !
Hana-one
Ja-sleep
😳😐
@@lmfaolmfaolmfao8357 exactly
I learned Chinese at school for 2 years, so I know basic things. It really has helped me with remembering things in Korean.
I already know a lot of Chinese characters from learning Japanese. So that helps.
Im chinese. I am currently learning Japanese and korean, actually is pretty smooth and easy for me. But, it doesnt matter whether u shld learn chinese or not, it depends on how u would learn and master the language. Overally, it would be awesome to learn some as some chinese vocabularies are actually quite helpful for your japanese and korean learning. :)
In Korean drama, I hear words like "yeogsi(역시)" or "hogsi(혹시)"
I was surprised to learn that Yeogsi is a Sino-Korean word for "亦是" and hogsi is "或是"
Recently, learning Hanja became necessary in elementry school in some provinces. And we still use Hanja in people's names. (These days, There are few original korean names too) So actually in korea, many native koreans know to read and write hanja at least their names and basic characters. In addition, to use korean better, knowing hanja is important for native people too
Learning Hanja at some point would be really interesting. How far into one's studies would you recommend taking a look at Hanja? And are there any particular resources for learning Hanja that you would recommend?
I don't know Korean but would recommend starting to learn Hanja at 1000 words if you're not comfortable with them. Otherwise, you can start the moment you master Hangul.
As a native Chinese speaker I think it is much easier to know the Chinese characters because it helps you to memorize the pronunciation of certain phrases and it’s also easier for you to understand the meaning of certain sentences. This applies to learning Japanese as well
5:03 We don't think it's necessary to learn Hanja.At the same times:Hanja "光化門” on the tower.
Actually there is just three hanja 光化門 behind the tourists on the gate of that old building, I think that's exact what hanja means to Korea--the history, their connection between their past and their present.
I remember I found an old book about film in the school library when I was in junior high, I can't understand a thing that is written on the book bcz it was published in the days people use Hanja in their daily lives... those days were over even before I was born.
Now that I've been studying Korean for awhile (at the beginning I really concentrated on understanding grammar), this is exactly what I'm currently doing -- learning Hanja to expand my vocabulary.
How did it go :0
This is literally why I personally find learning to read Japanese to be so much easier than Korean. Sure, hangul is easier than learning the 3 different Japanese scripts for Westerners coming from another alphabet system, as opposed to a syllabary. However, when you see kanji in a sentence, you do not need to know how the character is read to understand its meaning; whereas, when you see a hangul word, there is no meaning directly associated with it in the way a pictogram has.
Also, when you read Japanese and see words written in katakana, your brain immediately recognizes, "okay, this is most likely a loan word." When I read hangul, I have so much trouble picking out the loan words because it all looks the same. ㅋㅋ
True. I have the same experience. Korea should revive using hanja.
+Patrick Lee Chinese character is useless for korean language.
But for native korean, the problem you are suffering is just NOTHING at all..^^
Very insightful, i agree. Not only will writing hanja combined with hangul make the korean writing system just look cooler to foreign eyes, it will also have myriad amounts of useful implications. Hanja needs to be mandatory again
YoSoyDavidGalleta
This is only the case for foreigners. When native Chinese people learn the Korean language we are able to pick out the Chinese loanwords very easily even though they are written in a different script. It is a lot difficult for us to learn Japanese instead because there are multiple different readings for each Kanji in Japanese, whereas in Korean there is only one pronunciation for each Hanja.
Eg “fair” 공평 (Gongpyeong) = 公平 (Gongping)
“attack” 공격 (Gonggyeok) = 攻擊 (Gongji)
I’ve been Learning Korean language for a quite long time ! I decided to start studying 한자어 and so far I think I made really great decision ! It’s feels like I’m digging deeper into Korean and Korean language history more than anytime!
한국에서만 사용되던 한글과는 달리 한자는 동아시아 대부분의 나라에서 통용되던 제사나 주술 목적의 문자입니다. 함께 알면 좋겠지만 몰라도 큰 상관은 없어요. - 심지어는 한자의 표시까지 각 나라마다 달라지고 있는 추세입니다
春秋時代以後 漢字의 使用은 呪術과 큰 相關이 없습니다.
주술은 상고시대 이야기고 당시에는 동아시아의 로마어 격이었습니다
물론 백화문 대신에 한문을 사용했죠
@@armudi5947 네~ 맞습니다. 유럽어의 문자들이 따지고 보면 라틴어와 페니키아어에서 왔듯이, 아시아에는 한나라 이전부터 한자가 있었겠지요.
@@李世鎬 춘추시대 이전에 한자를 만든 사람들의 목적을 말한 것이었습니다
Thanks to my Kanji(≒Hanja) knowledge from my primary language, I can imagine what the unknown korean word mean sometimes. At the same time, I can write some in Korean by converting Kanji words into hangeul style.
As a korean, I think the usage of hanja is one of the unique advantage of korean. It can shorten the words very easily. In english, in order to shorten a word, english speakers usually tend to make acronyms. However, if you do acronym, it becomes hard to recognize what the origin was. E.g. MAD Can you even guess what this means? It’s an acronym of mutually assured destruction. While in korean, it’s 상호확증파괴(相互確證破壞) it extremely shortened compared to english version. You might say well chinese and japanese use hanja too. Yes they use it but to understand it, they have to know each characters. Here’s the unique advantage. We use phonogram to write ideogram. I.e. you can still guess or read what the word means. But chinese or japanese can’t. They can’t read or guess(might able to guess, depend to the character) the word.
There is still an issue with the singular hangul though. Like, 파 could mean a 'sea wave', but 破 definitely means 'to break'. Your 괴 could refer to 'gold', but 壞 or 坏 definitely means 'broken'. The guessing of the characters becomes exponentially easy when you get a base vocabulary of hanja. For example, if you did not know what 'destruction' meant, then MAD would be meaningless to you.
@Ben Kang Of course I don't. I just want to know how you guys can differentiate such things.
i feel like a crazy person for spending the past couple of years in my korean journey seeking out hanja resources but once you have a good base vocabulary, it’s sooo helpful in learning and understanding new words. it just makes everything make so much sense with the way my mind works
I've heard that hanja used to be taught in Korean schools, but they stopped at some point in the past (except for a few characters, as you mentioned). I also heard a rumor that some teachers would like to require them in schools again. Also, I've noticed that once in a while a news article will include a single hanja in square brackets when a word could be a homophone and both words are possible in the context, but the writer wants to make it clear which word they mean. In that situation, it might be possible to look up the hanja, so you don't need to learn it.
As for my opinion, I think it's useful to learn what each syllable means in order to expand your vocabulary quickly, but it's not necessary to know what its hanja looks like. You gave good examples of that in your video.
I think it's much more important to develop a good pronunciation.
The learning of 1800 Hanja characters has been reinstated in public schools since 2013.
Aha, they succeeded! Thanks for the update, Matthew.
Leverage hanja to effectively and efficiently expand Korean vocabulary if you already know. However if not you don't need. Indeed, Chinese and Japanese speakers tend to get a wide Korean vocabulary through hanja in a short period of time.
3:08 "you can impress koreans even if you only say annyeonghaseyo", kboo comes out when he says, "see what i mean" 3:11
Learning Korean, Chinese, and Japanese at the same time is a fun way to learn because of the many things they have in common, and I think you can improve mutually, but the drawback is that the words get mixed up when you try to speak them.
Thank you. This was a very interesting video! I'm honestly not sure how it would speed up your learning process. It's good to know the root characters that comprise a two-syllable Sino-Korean word , but the amount of time that you would invest in learning the characters would offset the speed at which you are able to acquire Korean vocabulary. I think it is good enough to know that related concepts will share identical sounds in either the first or the second part of a two-syllable Sino-Korean word without having to know what the Hanja looks like. I studied Chinese for five years and I'm still illiterate. I don't think it's worth the time.
Wow gooooooooooo Billy
I honestly think Hanja is important and I'll like to know more about it. It sounds very interesting
This is the power of East Asian cultural sphere.👍👍👍
Hanja is shared with Chinese and kanji and so helps facilitate communication between Korea and its neighbors.
I speak Chinese and English, both of which have multiple words for the same things. Within the shared vocabulary of Korean and Chinese, the two languages often have different preferred terms for the same thing.
Restaurant and travel in Chinese are 飯店 and 旅行 but in Korean they are "食堂" and "遊行".
食堂 is cafeteria (which may be internal/private) and 遊行 is protest in Chinese, so people won't understand you unless you write it, and in the second case, that the person read it character by character rather than a term.
Although close, Korean pronunciation is much softer than Cantonese ones, so we would not be able to understand a Korean, unless maybe we know the subject.
And you will understand also the Japanese and Chinese as well
though hanja may not be used as much in korea now, it was the normal language in history. so just for that, i think it’s important to keep teaching/ learning hanja.
You don't need to learn Hanja for learning Korean ,
but you'll get to know what sound usually means something after learning more Korean letters(Hanja letters)
There's some vocabulary that consists of only Hanja, and some are mixed,and some "pure korean letters"
Same Hanja can pronounce differently in Three contries(Korea, China, Japan).
Anakin Bradberry every Korean knows that in the context....
Even English people knows there is a different 'can' in "I can do something" and "Through away the can"...
Exactly. 門is the most frequently used among many 문s, so if it doesn't make sense, you can do it again with other ones, and you can do it without memorizing all the shape of characters. And since Korean people are not writing in 漢字, It's no use to memorize the shape.
I believe everything is important even te most slightest details. Even this.
An old Korean friend told me that most of koreans know Chinese characters like 韓 for s.korea, 北 for n.korea 😂, 美 for america, 中 for china and also few overused words like success 成功. If Koreans lose all 漢字 knowledge it would be a big loss for no reason.
Its already happening. They don't use it AT ALL for every day life. They teach it in high school, but most of my friends say they just forget it after because they don't ever use it. You don't need it to read and write, so why make people study something much more complicated than necessary. I honestly think if the Japanese had any sense they would loose Kanji and create a new writing system as well. Korea got it right. Also if it was your country wouldn't you want to you your own script that was created by your king? rather than barrowing a system from a neighboring country?
@@alexfriedman2047 uhh no because I could communicate with neighbouring countries that use the same writting system 😂😂😂 that's what happens in most of Europe. Koreans just isolated themselves from other countries by the decision of a mad king.
Well that is cool and all and I get it.... but Theres a couple things. One is that Hanja Hanzi Kanji is just too much for people to learn, and even native Japanese and Chiense forget the stroke orders. Two is he wasn't a mad king, back then only like 13% of the population or something could read and write. He was smart to create it , and if they want to have their own identity so what? I think it's cool that they want to use their own homegrown script and not use Chiense.
@@alexfriedman2047 Chinese characters are not really that impossible to learn. Writing maybe impossible. 🤣 Korean and Japanese have toooooo many homophone words. If they used hanja the language would be much more concise. They could adapt hanja with Hangul no problem and I heard they wanna bring back hanja.
1:22 如 itself means comparison, 不如 together means “not better than”. I think it might be more accurate to translate as “Even hearing about it (the topic in the context) a hundred times before, it’s better to physically see/experience it”
I think it would be very useful if Korean can also use Hanja!
Therefore Asian countries could have more things in common.
besides I think the use of Hanja is also part of Korean culture and history.
Knowing Japanese and Chinese, I hoped that Hanja played a more important role.
If you study LAW or MEDICINE in Korean, you MUST learn Hanja...why? B/C there are SO MANY homophones in Korean, it is easy to get confused so you must see the characters. Back in the 1950's 60s 70's in Korea they used a lot of Hanja in the newspapers, just like they do in Japanese, but slowly eliminated them in general to make it all "Korean", the deeper you learn korean the more beneficial it will be to know the Hanja. peace.
If you know how to write 漢字 Hanja (or Kanji or Hanzi), you can basically communicate among Chinese, Korean and Japanese even you don’t speak one another languages. Shared meaningful characters/scripts is the beauty of this 漢字 Hanzi/Hanja/Kanji.
I guess hanja in korean language has almost the same position as that of Latin words in english language. It's useful to understand the origin of the words, but it is not necessary at all.
I think it depends on your goal of learning Korean. If you want to get the first-hand information of the country's history and culture, learning hanja and even classical Chinese would be a plus, since most ancient Korean documents are written in classical Chinese.
For me as a beginning Korean learner from Taiwan who is also learning to read classical Chinese in Hokkien, I actually found many Korean words have similar pronunciation as their Hokkien counterparts, probably because both Hokkien and Korean have preserved the characteristics of Middle Chinese that were lost in Mandarin. I think that would probably make it easier for me to guess the meaning of the Korean words I don't know yet.
Koreans would hire Chinese to do the translation work of their ancient books if they dont learn hanja. How ironic
What??? You don't even learn Korean and YOU from China speaker perspective said Chinese can translate ancient Korean and feel the script is easy???? CHINESE AND KOREAN USE CHINESE CHARACTERS VERY DIFFERENTLY.....
If you mastering hanzi does not mean you can read and understand hanja easily..
@@angoblablabla9084 Maybe Im just being too subjective. But what I wanna address is that you will lose the essence of your culture if you guys dont learn hanja
This is exactly what I've been wondering about for ages, thank you, you're so cool! ;)
so their 'month' literally means 'moon' in their language????
Same as ours. We call 'month' in Filipino as Buwan, which is also how we call the moon...
Lol I just noticed 😁😂
Same in Malay, we say Bulan.
Jeon Sarang BuLan or BuWan
I'm Korean and like this video we don't really need to learn hanja or chinese characters but It
makes Korean more difficult to learn sometimes.
It's Because Korean has a lot of homonyms but we can't differentiate each homonyms while only using Hangul(Korean alphabet). Here's some example.
This is 천(川) which means Brook or Water flow, and this is 천(天) which means Sky or God.
So, because of this, Many news or magazines put Hanja on some homonyms and country names like
미국=美(America, hanja also means Beautiful)
일본=日(Japan, also means Sun, Day)
중국=中(China, also means Central)
Korean Hanja Vietnam Hanja Japan Hanja
In Japanese Chinese Characters are called "Kanji"
Hán tự kanji han3zi4 hanja
My thoughts about Hanja?
I'm learning korean for myself for three years now...sometimes I don't learn for months, then a lot for a while and just for myself with internet and books, so I'm still a beginner. I was in Korea for the first time last month, a 4 week-language trip with school and I was on beginner/elementary-niveau. I'm not able to have real conversations in korean, but can form many sentences and order things and stuff like that.
Hanja is very interesting, but I think in the next years I should continue to learn basic korean and don't waste learning time on Hanja^^
I find it so sad that they no longer use hanja. It's like Japanese abandoning kanji and use only hiragana.
As in the case of native korean speaker who are exposed to Korean Language since childhood, perhaps hanja is not needed in daily communication.
However for someone who knows Chinese or Japanese language and wants to pickup the Korean Language quickly, Hanja will speed up the learning process, this is definite. It's just like someone who knows Chinese and wants to pickup Japanese vice versa.
Apart from Hanja issue, in Chinese (mainland china using pinyin) and Japanese language, one of the common computer input system is romanized input. This allows interoperability on a standard English Keyboard, anywhere in the world! However, romanized input is not so common for the Korean language, can't find it in Win10, although it exist on Mac and Linux( although I know there are people who invented Nagaelset or Hangul Set Self Defined Dictionary plugin on Chinese Input software Sougou). For a foreigner of a [Beginner] stage , trying to type Korean on a hard keyboard based on the Hangul Keyboard, it is tedious as one may need to get stickers attached, or buy a Korean Keyboard from overseas (even not convenient for Laptop users unless one wants to use stickers). However, on a device with touchpads like Tablets or Smartphones, it does not matter much as the keyboard is a softkeyboard, and for beginners, it is even faster typing on Hangul Keyboard Set than using romanization input, as one would generally require less number of input touch for a Hangul Character.
I study at chinese school, is that why i know how to write hanguk easily
are you sure because you just said" i know how to write korea easily"
Studying 한자 is kind of my hobby and it makes learning Korean so much easier.
I’m Chinese and it is indeed a lot easier for Chinese people to learn the Korean language because we basically have a huge head start in terms of our vocabulary bank. The biggest obstacle that Chinese people have with Korean is usually the grammar which is such a pain.. there is so much different conjugated forms of the same verb in Korean whereas in the Chinese language there are practically no grammatical rules whatsoever (tenses, subject verb agreement etc.), let alone these conjugations.
Being a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese (and also my own Chinese dialect, Southern Min which is actually closer to Korean in terms of pronunciation because both have preserved closer phonology to Middle Chinese), and having studied the Korean language and history quite extensively, I’d say that Hanja (漢字 / 한자) is important if you want to appear more sophisticated or well-versed in the Korean language or if you want to read historical texts from Korea because they are all entirely written in Chinese characters. Chinese basically plays a similar role for Korean, as Latin or Greek in the English language. You would sound a lot more sophisticated by using the word “inquire” (which comes from Latin) instead of the word “ask” (which comes from Anglo-Saxon / Germanic). But the influence of Chinese on Korean, I’d say, is a lot greater than Latin or Greek on the English language. While you can use both “inquire” and “ask” to refer to the same thing in English, some native Korean terms have become obsolete in favour of the Chinese loanword equivalent.
Thank you thank you soooo much for the videos you do I’m really great full!
Hi from Guatemla! 🇬🇹💕
2:19 let's just take a moment of silence for the poeple who now think 화장실 has something to do with makeup
Actually, it does! 화장 for "makeup" is the same 화장 inside 화장실. The meaning of 화장실 is a "room" (실) for taking care of "makeup."
Learn Korean with GO! Billy Korean OMA GERSH WOW, NOW 교실 and 침실 MAKE SENSE! I FEEL SO DUMB NOW.. I'm sorry, and thank you too!!
As a Vietnamese, I have to learn "Kanji", because "Kanji" is 60% of Vietnamese, Just like Korean.
"Root strong, tree strong." - Mr. Miyagi, The Karate Kid III.
I think the korean government should reintegrate hanja back into mandatory education, because tho it is rigorous to learn, it can help with critical thinking, memory, and it just makes you look well versed in korean. MAKE HANJA MANDATORY AGAIN, IF THE JAPANESE CAN DO IT, KOREANS CAN DEFINITELY DO IT
I'm starting to learn Korean and I plan on just knowing the hanja from the get-go since I already know Chinese