Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Mashimaro]

After studying alot of beginner level korean grammar, I decided I need to boost my vocab.. The problem is, all the words look like gobbledigook, as I have no idea where they come from.. I'm guessing if I learnt some important hanja it would help me understand vocab. ie. maybe there is a character for 'wood' that is present in wood related words etc.

Do I have the wrong idea here? Can anyone recoment some good books that help explain vocab through hanja.. or simply a good hanja book..

Cheers

[dogbert]

You might find this book very helpful:

Handbook of Korean Vocabulary: An Approach to Word Recognition and Comprehension

[Son Deureo!]

You are absolutely on the right track here, and I second Dogbert's book recommendation. It contains lists of related words organized by their hanja roots, as well as by native Korean root words. Learning to recognize common hanja root syllables makes learning and recognizing new vocabulary words much easier.

This doesn't necessarily entail learning to actually read and write the hanja characters (it can't hurt, I'm sure, but I still find that more trouble than it's worth for the most part), just the sounds.

To take your example of wood, there is the hanja character ��/��, which means wood or tree. It recurs in the following words (among others):

���� - wood + material = lumber
��� - wood + foot = crutch
�� - wood + horse = rocking horse
���� - seed + tree = seedling/sapling
�ĸ��� - plant + tree + day = Arbor Day

At any rate, the book has been a big help to me.

[Jensen]

There are a lot of basic hanja introduction books in Korean written for younger kids...I have a couple of older ones set up on a "one-a-day" schedule: 365 basic characters with some examples of useage for each, and a half a page of practice space. I like that basic format better than most the college level texts written for foreigners. Once you get a basic familiarity and figure out how to look characters up in the dictionary, you can teach yourself from materials you find interesting rather than having to sweat through some boring text of "readings."

An aside: something I found out when learning hanja (to the limited extent that I have) is there are a lot of 40-50ish Koreans who can get around with hanja some, but are far from any real mastery. I taught some high school kids who were generally very arrogant about their Supreme Mastery of hanja, thought themselves to be much smarter than working class guys who hadn't been well-educated in the subject. I guessed it had something to do with the attitudes of their teachers who probably felt the subject had been not given appropriate attention and wanted to "get even" a little.

Still, there's something about wealthy know-it-all high school kids that makes you want to kick them in the ass.

[Gwangjuboy]

One useful tip I can suggest is as follows. It can be quite easy to discriminate between a word of Chinese origin and a word of pure Korean origin by looking at the sounds of the word. A lot of Korean words consist of letter formations that aren't possible in the Chinese language. You can practice this with names. e.g Jeong Hyun is of Chinese origin. In that respect you can deduce that most Korean words consisting of the words Jeong and Hyun are of Chinese origin. An example of a pure Korean name is Pu Leum. Do as above with those characters too.

Another tip is to find a Chinsese origin word. e.g Jil Mun Ha Da. This is the verb to "enquire." "Mun" is a Chinese character that means "question." Other Korean words also contain that character and have similar meanings. e.g mun jae (problem) and Jil Mun (question.) Also, generally verbs of Chinese origin are not commonly used if there is a Korean equivalent. For example, in Korean the verb to pay is "Nae Da." The Chinese verb to pay is "Ji Bul Ha Da." Nearly always use the former. Same for "Jil Mun Ha Da." Use the pure Korean word "Mud Da" when using the verb "to ask/enquire."

[Gwangjuboy]

[seoulmon]

I actually like, the Handbook of Korean Vocabulary book a lot. Miho Choo was my teacher back in Texas, and although her teaching style is lost, the book is right on. Learning the ���� root is a good way to bundle knowledge. Instead of learning that ���� means "wig," learn that the �� means "false" and you can learn about 10 different words that have "false" in them.

Also, when you learn ����, weird things start to happen. Like you can hear a word you've never heard before, and understand what it means.

About learning ����: 500 is great for Korean (about 6 months of learning). They have level tests which can help keep you focused. I learned from Dave (I think his ID is ???mithenradge???), who might come across as arrogant from his posts, but who actually he's super cool and has a down to earth teaching style.

[Jensen]

[seoulmon]

[Jensen]

[mithridates]

It takes place three or four times a year at various universities around the country. The test is administered by the Korean Society for Language and Literature (or something like that). It takes place at a great many universities around the country but they are used only as test writing places, and the universities themselves have nothing to do with the test.

[kangnamdragon]

[purrrfect]

on a marginally-related note (well, it has to do with language), I love your signature Mithridates! I saw that the letters were mixed up, but when I started to try to read it, I was surprised that I could understand exactly what you were saying and I actually read it quite naturally...
I always appreciate anyone else who's interested in and appreciates languages.

[mithridates]

Since you like my sig, I'll write the full version here. I had to cut it down quite a bit because of the character limit. Saw it at my friends house one day and just had to jot it down.


"Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Er...waht?"


And by the way, I like your cat avatar.

[Zyzyfer]

Um, yea. Hanja roots help. I just naturally look into language like that, but it really opens up what you can learn.