HELLO my fellow students. The purpose of this lesson is to feed curiosity. it is not a vital part of learning Korean. We are going to talk about hanja, which is the use of Chinese writing in Korea.
The Chinese writing system is interesting in that it does not use an alphabet. Instead, each character represents an entire word. It's like emojis! and I'm sure you understand mean that with no disrespect. There's got to be a reason why a language with a completely logical and easy to learn writing system like Korean still prefers to use Chinese characters in some situations. Like I said, reading hanja is not important for getting by in Korea. But aren't you intrigued? Let's learn.
A lot of these Chinese characters look like the words they represent. Some of them require more imagination than others. I'll show you what I mean. Let's start with mountain. See it sticking up there in the middle like a tall mountain? Pretty easy.
山
This next one is person. Now we can imagine two legs and a body.
人
This one builds off of person. It means big. Imagine the person with his arms stretched wide making himself as big as possible. Maybe he's saying "I caught a fish thiiiis big"
大
This one means small. Now the person has his feet together and is making himself small, and his hands are closer together "I caught a fish this small"
小
小
And now this one does not involve the person but it fits in with the other two. It means middle. Imagine a knife cutting a box in the middle.
中
These characters are useful when you have three sizes of something small, medium, and large. Middle also means medium. Big can also mean lots or a lot.
小中大
Let's look at another intuitive one. This means door or gate. And it kinda looks like one too.
門
This next character also builds off of person. It means enter. Imagine a person walking quickly thru the entrance and their hair is flowing behind them.
入
This one is exit. I imagine doors that open up so a mouse can exit.
出
This one means mouth, and it does look like an open mouth
口
中
These characters are useful when you have three sizes of something small, medium, and large. Middle also means medium. Big can also mean lots or a lot.
小中大
Let's look at another intuitive one. This means door or gate. And it kinda looks like one too.
門
This next character also builds off of person. It means enter. Imagine a person walking quickly thru the entrance and their hair is flowing behind them.
入
This one is exit. I imagine doors that open up so a mouse can exit.
出
This one means mouth, and it does look like an open mouth
口
We can combine these characters to make
門口doorway
門口doorway
入口entrance
and now you will know how to get in and out of places.
What I also like about this in relation to Korean is that the person looks like the Korean letter "s" which is the beginning letter of the Korean word for person: sa-ram.
and now you will know how to get in and out of places.
What I also like about this in relation to Korean is that the person looks like the Korean letter "s" which is the beginning letter of the Korean word for person: sa-ram.
人 사람
And the mouth looks like a Korean "m" which is the letter that the English word "mouth"" begins with.
口 ㅁMouth
Let's move on to something a little different. This is sun. You can imagine that this is the window you look through to see the sun.
日
And the mouth looks like a Korean "m" which is the letter that the English word "mouth"" begins with.
口 ㅁMouth
Let's move on to something a little different. This is sun. You can imagine that this is the window you look through to see the sun.
日
And this is the moon.. It also looks like a window but through this window you see a moon, and unlike the sun window, the moon window has curtains.
月
月
These characters not only mean sun and moon, but also day and month.
日day/sun 月month/moon
and just for completeness, lets add year. The character for year is actually a combination of characters.
日月年
This top part is actually a distorted version of the character for person. More elaborate Chinese characters are actually made by combining simple ones. You just have to alter their appearance so they fit together nicer.
𠂉=人
This other part of the character... there are a couple of different interpretations that I found. Like the word dry 干 or complete 十 or harvest禾 or wheel around. 㐄
Wheel around looks the closest, but this is a character that is extremely rare in Chinese writing. Not worth committing to memory. Finally, I concluded that this was not the best example to show you how complex characters are made up of smaller simple ones. So, I've decided that this looks like a half undecorated Christmas tree. Like the type of Christmas tree you still have up at New Year... the uhm new year on the Gregorian calendar.
I want to keep my lessons short so I don't give you more information than you can possibly remember, but I wanna do more hanja lessons at some point. I know there's a hundred other things in Korean that are more important than this, and a lot you may already know how to read Chinese so use your likes and dislikes and comments to tell me what you think. Here's a list of some popular hanja characters. Just try to remember those without my help, I dare you. thanks for studying with me, my fellow students. jal gye-yo!
日day/sun 月month/moon
and just for completeness, lets add year. The character for year is actually a combination of characters.
日月年
This top part is actually a distorted version of the character for person. More elaborate Chinese characters are actually made by combining simple ones. You just have to alter their appearance so they fit together nicer.
𠂉=人
This other part of the character... there are a couple of different interpretations that I found. Like the word dry 干 or complete 十 or harvest禾 or wheel around. 㐄
Wheel around looks the closest, but this is a character that is extremely rare in Chinese writing. Not worth committing to memory. Finally, I concluded that this was not the best example to show you how complex characters are made up of smaller simple ones. So, I've decided that this looks like a half undecorated Christmas tree. Like the type of Christmas tree you still have up at New Year... the uhm new year on the Gregorian calendar.
I want to keep my lessons short so I don't give you more information than you can possibly remember, but I wanna do more hanja lessons at some point. I know there's a hundred other things in Korean that are more important than this, and a lot you may already know how to read Chinese so use your likes and dislikes and comments to tell me what you think. Here's a list of some popular hanja characters. Just try to remember those without my help, I dare you. thanks for studying with me, my fellow students. jal gye-yo!
Watch The Lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl72ykK5pUQ&feature=youtu.be
