Korean Job Discussion Forums

[taobenli]

I got some good feedback recently from people on this board about dictionaries and other language-learning materials, and I'm going to buy the Minjung Pocket Dictionary and probably the English-Korean Practical conversation dictionary as well. I was also looking at a Minjung dictionary on Hanbooks.com which is a "Hanja-Korean-Chinese-Japanese-English" dictionary. I think it might be good for me because I have studied Japanese and Mandarin, and don't want to carry Japanese or Chinese dictionaries around with me, but I hear words in Korean class that are very close to another Asian language and think "What is that character, where did the word come from?" (I miss kanji/hanzi!)

Does anyone have this dictionary? Anyone ordered from Hanbooks and liked/disliked them? What are the deal with hanja, anyway? Do Koreans use them less and less? How many hanja do well-educated Koreans tend to know?

Thanks!

[the saint]

No but I can tell what you what I do have and, as a speaker/reader of Japanese can vouch for its usefulness:
Handbook of Korean Vocabulary by Choo and O'Grady.

I got it off Amazon.com.

Basically it lists Korean words by hanja grouping together all words that derive from a particular character so that, say, under �� we have
���� middle age
������ under construction
���� second hand

As you can see, the key hanja doesn't have to lead the compound - just be in it somewhere.

I used this dictionary today to confound one of my own Korean students who didn't know the hanja for second hand which, as I know Japanese, are second nature to me and help me pick up Korean compound vocab very fast indeed.

It's not a pocket book but a very very useful reference to help you build vocab logically and fast.

[taobenli]

Thanks, the saint-

I'll look into that book!

taobenli