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rabidcake
Joined: 10 Aug 2009
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 Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2010 9:49 pm Post subject: The Hanjia Tests |
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My Korean teacher today was telling me about these certificates you can get by knowing Hanjia. Basically you have to complete a couple tests or so that quiz on your Hanjia knowledge.
Anyone ever heard or even taken such tests? I think it would be interesting if a foreigner ever got one. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2010 11:28 pm Post subject: Re: The Hanjia Tests |
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| rabidcake wrote: |
My Korean teacher today was telling me about these certificates you can get by knowing Hanjia. Basically you have to complete a couple tests or so that quiz on your Hanjia knowledge.
Anyone ever heard or even taken such tests? I think it would be interesting if a foreigner ever got one. |
The study book I have was made specifically for the tests in question, containing all the hanja that can possibly be tested up to level 3 (1800 in total). One of my co-workers also printed me out a practice example copy of the level 3 test.
The level 3 test (which is actually fairly high, there are quite a few lower level tests) is not as simple as rote memorizing hanja. There are a number of question types, including:
1) Translating Hangeul words into Hanja.
2) Translating Hanja words into Hangeul.
3) Writing the reading and meaning of particular Hanja character.
4) Looking at a given Hanja character and drawing its root.
5) Looking at a given Hanja character and drawing one that has the same meaning.
6) Looking at a given Hanja character and drawing one that has an opposite meaning.
7) Looking at one of the many 4-Hanja-long proverbs in the Korean language which has one Hanja missing and filling it in.
Needless to say, it's no where as easy as I originally envisioned, and there are still other, higher level Hanja tests after this one. The lower level ones aren't quite as rough, but they also don't mean as much in terms of real Hanja mastery.
After looking it over, I tentatively plan on taking it in 2 years time. A year and a half memorizing the 1800 Hanja in my book (I don't like to study too hard; one could do it faster), and half a year of hard drilling to cement them in my memory, along with root associations, synonyms, antonyms, and proverbs. |
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rabidcake
Joined: 10 Aug 2009
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| Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 12:41 pm Post subject: |
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Ok, that's really interesting FOX.
So the book you are currently using let's you prepare for those 1800 Characters?
Did you by chance study Chinese characters before studying Korean? Also, does it look really good if you pass one of those tests (especially being a foreigner) or is it more out of self-satisfaction?
The way you described it, it sounds a bit hard but not impossible. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 3:54 pm Post subject: |
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| rabidcake wrote: |
| Did you by chance study Chinese characters before studying Korean? |
A tiny bit, but only about a hundred characters. Not to any meaningful degree.
| rabidcake wrote: |
| Also, does it look really good if you pass one of those tests (especially being a foreigner) or is it more out of self-satisfaction? |
If you do one of the really low levels (like 7 or 6) it would be more for self-satisfaction. If you do one of the higher levels, you'll have an impressive Korean credential that even most Koreans don't have and couldn't easily acquire without substantial additional study themselves. Koreans equate competency with Hanja to being erudite and intelligent, so it can't help but to speak well for you. Even the fact that I'm studying Hanja has a lot of people at my school very impressed. |
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rabidcake
Joined: 10 Aug 2009
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| Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 6:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| rabidcake wrote: |
| Did you by chance study Chinese characters before studying Korean? |
A tiny bit, but only about a hundred characters. Not to any meaningful degree.
| rabidcake wrote: |
| Also, does it look really good if you pass one of those tests (especially being a foreigner) or is it more out of self-satisfaction? |
If you do one of the really low levels (like 7 or 6) it would be more for self-satisfaction. If you do one of the higher levels, you'll have an impressive Korean credential that even most Koreans don't have and couldn't easily acquire without substantial additional study themselves. Koreans equate competency with Hanja to being erudite and intelligent, so it can't help but to speak well for you. Even the fact that I'm studying Hanja has a lot of people at my school very impressed. |
Hi Fox,
It's been over a year since you talked about taking one of those exams. Did you finally go through with it? |
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nathanrutledge
Joined: 01 May 2008
Location: Marakesh
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| Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 8:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Yeah, I'd like to hear more about this too. Sounds interesting... |
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furtakk
Joined: 02 Jun 2009
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| Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2011 8:36 am Post subject: |
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Anyone have any recommendations on books for studying Hanja?
I want to slowly... slowly start studying. Preferably a book aimed at foreigner learners. |
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rabidcake
Joined: 10 Aug 2009
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 3:20 pm Post subject: |
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| furtakk wrote: |
Anyone have any recommendations on books for studying Hanja?
I want to slowly... slowly start studying. Preferably a book aimed at foreigner learners. |
A lot of Korean bookstores have them. You can ask them for the easier ones and probably find some books that are for preperation for the Hanja exam.
I have noticed that learners of Korean have a very difficult time learning Hanja, it usually takes them years to acquire a small quantity of 500 to 1000 Hanja only. Of course, Koreans themselves are also really bad when it comes to studying Hanja.
Anyhow, I'd love to test for the certificate but the only problem is my Korean blows, I can only write and read a lot of complicated Hanja and understand the meanings, but I wouldn't be able to use Korean to describe it. I am not great at standard Korean.
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Setaro
Joined: 08 Aug 2010
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 4:58 pm Post subject: |
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| furtakk wrote: |
Anyone have any recommendations on books for studying Hanja?
I want to slowly... slowly start studying. Preferably a book aimed at foreigner learners. |
There's a couple of books aimed at Foreigners, with titles like 'Hanja for students of Korean' and similar.
Just a quick question though, to the OP and others interested in studying Chinese characters. The Chinese characters that Korea uses (or rather, doesn't use, because you almost NEVER see them written anywhere here) are the traditional forms, which only really Taiwan and Hong Kong still use.
If you're going to go the monumental effort of learning around 2000 characters, wouldn't it be more fulfilling (and useful) to learn them for a language that actually still uses them, i.e Japanese or Chinese (neither of which use traditional characters)?
I say this as a guy who loves Chinese characters, and as a student of Japanese. I love learning them. But if you learn the traditional characters in Korea, you'll never actually get to use them... |
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furtakk
Joined: 02 Jun 2009
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 9:19 pm Post subject: |
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to be honest, i'm not entirely interested or concerned with learning the actual written hanja (i.e. the actual chinese character), but more so the hangul written form and it's meaning.
i.e. instead of memorizing how to write 人, i just want to remember it as 인 and then study the meaning to help remember and develop my vocab. i don't know if this a stupid or backwards way of going about things, but from the few hanja (meanings) i've learned it has definitely helped me remember random vocabulary. |
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jvalmer
Joined: 06 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 9:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Setaro wrote: |
| If you're going to go the monumental effort of learning around 2000 characters, wouldn't it be more fulfilling (and useful) to learn them for a language that actually still uses them, i.e Japanese or Chinese (neither of which use traditional characters)? |
The Japanese still largely use traditional characters, although a substantial amount of the kanji have been simplified, many of them unique to only Japan.
Anyways, even 50 years after the fact there is still heated debate in China on the simplified vs traditional characters. I wouldn't be surprised if mainland China decides to teach both on a limited basis in the future. |
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Setaro
Joined: 08 Aug 2010
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 9:47 pm Post subject: |
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| furtakk wrote: |
to be honest, i'm not entirely interested or concerned with learning the actual written hanja (i.e. the actual chinese character), but more so the hangul written form and it's meaning.
i.e. instead of memorizing how to write 人, i just want to remember it as 인 and then study the meaning to help remember and develop my vocab. i don't know if this a stupid or backwards way of going about things, but from the few hanja (meanings) i've learned it has definitely helped me remember random vocabulary. |
There's an entire vocabulary book based around the Chinese character origins, it's called something like 'The Handbook of Korean Vocabulary" and it's rather amazing. For example it shows you the character for beautiful '美', then a list of words used in Korean beginning with 'mi' that stem from that hanja.
And you're right too, for some people it's a great way to remember vocab. Like I remember the Korean for 'parents' much easier after I learned that it comes from combining the hanja for father and mother and giving it the Chinese reading:'父母 [부모]'.
I've also found 3 great books that are for Korean students doing the JLPT. It shows all the Chinese characters used in Japanese (kanji), along with Korean readings, Japanese readings, vocab examples, and the variant forms if the Japanese Kanji and the Korean Hanja are different, for example for the first character from 'school' it shows both characters: hakkyo = 學(校) appears alongside Japanese gakkou = 学(校). Those books are dirt cheap and extremely useful if you are working in Korea (or learning Korean anyway) and already have some Japanese knowledge. |
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nathanrutledge
Joined: 01 May 2008
Location: Marakesh
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| Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 11:01 pm Post subject: |
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Traditional vs. simplified. Maybe it's just me, but I find, from my limited experience with this, that a lot of the simple traditional characters are the same, and that a lot of the complicated ones are still pretty similar to the traditional ones that if you can generally feel your way through what you're reading.
Just my two cents.
Also, the Handbook of Korean Vocabulary = excellent book. |
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rabidcake
Joined: 10 Aug 2009
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| Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 4:09 pm Post subject: Update for the Hanja tests |
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| So any new updates from anybody? Has anyone taken any of the Hanja tests recently? |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 11:49 pm Post subject: |
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Nice to see this thread up again!
Last year I took two of the Hanja tests. First I took 4급II in the earlier part of the year, which I passed easily. Then in the later part of the year I took 4급, which I passed, but just barely, not because I didn't know the Hanja well (I have every Hanja on the test memorized reasonably well), but because of the weird questions about which Hanja have "long sounds" and not always being sure which Hanja to use when converting Korean words into Hanja words.
Right now I'm working towards learning enough Hanja for the 3급II test; my Anki deck currently has 1500 Hanja in it and is still growing. I've also been working on 한문. |
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