A guide to korean characters docx

I i HANG&-IN-A-HURRY CHART I Consonants t I Stressed Consonants I As~irated Consonants 1 I Basic Consanants a (two basic consonants (sgort line added to written together) basic consonants) I 8. ;ng (final; no sound as initial) lo. * h 'Slightly different than basic consonant number six. Basic consonants k, t, p, and ch are ~ronounced as g, d, b, and j, respectively, when occurring as medials. Stressed con- sonaots are pronounced with more stress by far than their unvoiced English counterparts, g, d, b, s, and j. Aspirated consonants are said with an unabashed explosion of air. Initial "r" is pronounced akin to its Spanish counterpart. A HANG&-IN-A-HURRY CHART 11 Vowels Other Diphthongs (combinations of various vowels) St\ wa . (water) 4 wae (w_et) ~6 (w_on) The "0" written with each vowel is an unvoiced consonant which functions to indicate where an initial consonant maybe affixed to the vowel when writing a syllable. See the inside back cover for information on forming syllables. - - "Y" Diphthongs (short line added to basic vowels ) ib. 01 ya 2b. 4 yi( 3b. 3 yo 4b $ YU Basic Vowels 1. 01 a (father) 2. 0] 6 (hut) 3. 9 o (heme) 4. l- (plume) 0 6 5. - (so_o~) * 6. 01 i (kt) 'Pronounce without "I" Diphthongs (vowel #6 added to basic vowels) la. 01 ae (hat) 2a. O)) e (se_t) 3a. 4 oe (w_et) 4a. ui (E) 5a. 51 iii (we)* pursing the lips. A Guide to KOREAN CHARACTERS Reading and Writing Hangiil and Hanja SECOND REVISED EDITION by BRUCE K. GRANT HOLLY M For Audrey Michele Denise Mirae Bruce Maynard Monique and Taylor Copyright @ 1982, 1979 by Bruce K. Grant All rights reserved First published in 1979 Reprinted in 1989 by Hollyrn International Corp. 18 Donald Place Elizabeth, New Jersey 07208 U.S.A. Published simultaneously in Korea by Hollym Corporation; Publishers 14-5 Kwanchol-dong, Chongno-gu, Seoul, Korea Phone: (02)735-7554 Fax: (02)730-5149 ISBN: 0-930878- 13-2 Printed in Korea PREFACE This book was designed as a guide for those who wish to learn written Korean. It presents for the first time in English the information necessary to read and write hangiil, the Korean alphabet, and the 1,800 Chinese characters taught in Korean schools. A Guide to Korean Characters contains simplified charts explaining hang5l and models showing exactly how to write each of the 1,800 Basic Characters. Sam- ple vocabulary words, selected on the basis of frequency of use, are included for each character. This handbook also functions as a character dictionary since its entries are ar- ranged in stroke-count order and it contains both a radical and a phonetic index. I am very grateful to those who have helped in the prep- aration of A Guide to Korean Characters. Mr. Cho PyTing-ha was indefatiguable, and the writing models in the text are examples of his graceful calligraphy. Dr. Ch6n Y6ng-ch'd and Mr. Yi Pang-h5n kindly read the entire manuscript and made many useful suggestions. I am indebted to Mr. Chu Shin-wgn, Chief Editor at Hollyrn Corporation: Publishers, for his patient guidance. I alone, of course, am responsible for errors. Seoul. Korea Bruce K. Grant July 1979 CONTENTS PREFACE 7 INTRODUCTION The Korean Writing System Hints on Learning Hangu'l History of Chinese Characters The Six Categories of Chinese Characters Hints on Learning Hanja Explanation of a Sample Character Entry Writing Characters Glossary THE 1,800 BASIC CHARACTERS 25 APPENDICES 33 3 Korean Surnames 335 Easily Confused Characters 336 Commonly Abbreviated Characters 33 7 Characters with Multiple Readings 338 The 900 Middle School Characters in Textbook Order 339 INDEX How to Use a Character Dictionary Radical Index Phonetic Index SELECTED BIBLlOGRAPHY ENDPAPER CHARTS ~an~ill-in-a-hurry Charts Hangill Writing Models syllable Writing Models insidejront cover inside back cover INTRODUCTION THE KOREAN WRITING SYSTEM Korean is a member of the Altaic family of languages and is very similar to Japanese. It has been spoken on the Korean peninsula for more than 2,000 years but has enjoyed an in- digenous writing system since only the fifteenth century. Chinese exerted an early influence on Korean, and loan words from the Chinese now comprise about sixty percent of the Korean vocabulary. Chinese is essentially uninflected, while Korean is poly- synthetic. So different, in fact, are the two languages that Chinese and English have more in common than do Chinese and Korean. Ancient Koreans found Chinese ideographs unsuited to phonetically represent their richly inflected lan- guage, so they adopted written Chinese itself. Literate Koreans wrote one language, classical Chinese, and spoke another, Korean, until the dawn of the twentieth century, a period in excess of 1,500 years. In 1440, King Sejong of the Yi Dynasty set a group of scholars to the task of inventing a means of writing the Ko- rean language. The resulting phonetic alphabet was prom- ulgated in 1446 but did not enjoy widespread use. Hangiil, as it is now called, is perhaps the most scientific alphabet in general use in the world. In 1972, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea directed that 1,800 Sino-Korean characters, hanja, be taught in all middle and high schools in the nation. These are com- monly called the Basic Characters, and each is treated in this book. Modern Korean is written in a mixed script in which hanja is used for Chinese loan words and hangiil for purely Korean items. The Korean alphabet is so simple that its sixteen totally 11 INTRODUCTION distinct letters can be learned in minutes with the aid of the hangiil-in-a-hurry charts at the inside front cover of this book. Use these charts to decode hangal appearing in the book and elsewhere until it becomes entirely familiar to you. The charts at the inside back cover illustrate how to write each hangGI letter and how to combine the letters into sylla- bles. Korean consonants are pronounced much as they are in English, though they annoyingly assume different shades of sound when they appear as initials, medials, or finals. The five stressed consonants are pronounced with greatest possible stress but with no expulsion of air. For example, "tt" ( r-c ) is pronounced akin to the d of don't inUDon't do that!'' The aspirated consonants are pronounced with a heavy expulsion of air. The "k' "( 3 ) is similar, for example, to the k of kill in ill that rattlesnake!" Vowels are pronounced essentially as noted on the inside front cover. Access to a native speaker is recommended for refined pronunciation. HISTORY OF CHINESE CHARACI'ERS 1n.ancient China, pieces of bone and shell were incised with characters and then heated. The resulting cracks among the characters were used by oracles to foretell the future. Thou- sands of such "oracle bones" have been unearthed. The char- acters on them, the oldest extant, date from about 1,400 B.C. Virtually all principles for the formation of ideographs are evident on the oracle bones, suggesting a long period of de- velopment prior to 1,400 B.C. After that time, characters underwent a continuing evolution of form that ended about 2,000 years ago with the development of the "square char- acters" still used today. The following chart traces four char- acters through this evolution and illustrates character styles which a modern reader is likely to encounter. Dates are very approximate. lNTRODUcrION Forms of Chinese Characters THE SIX CATEGORIES OF CHINESE CHARACTERS Characters traditionally have been classified into Six Cate- gories according to how they were originally fabricated or how they later accrued meaning. An understanding of these cate- gories can bring a sense of order to the beginning reader who is likely to be bewildered by a forest of seemingly unrelated graphs. Moreover, the characteristics of the different types of hanja suggest varying learning strategies for their mastery. The Sung Dynasty scholar, Ch6ng Ch'iao, apportioned 24,235 characters to the Six Categories, and his results provide an indication of the relative size of each category. (Kwtin, page 2. See Bibliography.) Category One: Simple Pictographs Simple Pictographs were the first type of character fabricated by the ancient Chinese. They picture objects, such as tree,*. The trunk, branches and roots of a tree can be seen even in this modern form of the character. Another Simple Pictograph is (sun). This stylized character was originally round, and the line in its center represented rays of sunshine. Only 608 of the characters classified by Cheng Ch'iao are Simple Pictographs, but they are important because many of them are the building blocks from which other hanja are made. A Simple Pictograph is easily learned by associating its shape and meaning. Category Two: Simple Diagrams Simple Diagrams were among the earliest characters made and depict relationships for which no picture can readily be drawn. Two common examples are I: (up) and (down). The diagrammatic nature of this pair is readily apparent. Simple Diagrams are best learned by associating shape and meaning. Ch$ng Ch'iao allotted 107 of his characters to this category. Category Three: Simple Compounds A subsequent development in the history of characters, Sim- ple Compounds are truly ideographic. They were made from INTRODUCIlON two or more existing characters whose combined meanings provide a clue to the denotation of the compound. The Simple Compound resulting from the union of R (sun) and * (tree) is R. The new character is pronounced 3- (tong), and signifies ''east," taking its meaning from the "sun" rising from behind a "tree" in the "east." A Simple compound is best learned by relating its meaning to that of its constituent elements. Of the graphs classified by Ch2ng Ch'iao, 740 were Simple Compounds. Category Four: Phonetic Compounds About ninety percent of the characters of Ch2ng Ch'iao, 21,811 hanja, are Phonetic Compounds. These graphs can be characterized as semi-ideographic and semi-phonetic since each is composed of a semantic element which furnishes a hint to the general meaning of the compound and a phonetic element which provides a direct clue to its pronunciation. The phonetic clue in the vast majority of Sino-Korean char- acters is a significant potential mnemonic aid but is widely regarded as of limited value. Chinese lexicography obscures the phonetic relationships among characters, and some Phonetic Compounds which share an identical phonetic ele- ment have differing readings either because they were not originally homophonous or because their pronunciations diverged during centuries of phonetic and dialectic evolution. Nevertheless, it is likely that the phonetic clue is underexploited rather than overexploited by students of hanja . Category Five: Derived Meanings Derived Meanings originally belonged to one of the first four categories of characters. The evolution of Chinese gen- erated a need to assign abstract meanings to characters with concrete denotations. Graphs of this type took on abstract meanings but maintained their original denotation as well. An example is 9, originally a Simple Pictograph of a man sitting with crossed legs. Its derived meanings are "exchange, com- INTRODUrnON municate, intercourse, mix, join." This leap in meaning is comprehensible to anyone who has watched old Korean gentlemen sit cross legged by the hour and "communicate" with cronies. Chtng Ch'iao assigned 372 of his characters to this category. Its characters are best learned by relating their original and derived meanings. Category Six: Arbitrary Meanings Characters of this type also belonged to one of the first four categories and took on additional denotations, but they sur- rendered their original meanings altogether. An example is jff , a Simple Pictograph of a growing stalk of grain. Other characters possessed the same meaning, but there was no character for "to come," which was pronounced the same as % . As a homophone, % was pressed into service to denote "to come" and has maintained only that meaning for millenia. Graphs of this category account for 598 of the characters of ChSng Ch'iao. They are best learned arbitrarily. HINTS ON LEARNING IiANJA There is no royal road to learning characters, but the task is not as difficult as it may appear, either. The sheer number of hanja is daunting; large character dictionaries may run to 50,000 entries. But no one need learn anything like this ridic- ulous number, and fewer than 300 discrete graphs compose all others. A study in Taiwan showed that the most common 400 characters in use there comprised fully seventy-three percent of all written material. (DeFrancis, page xix.) The learning of Chinese characters will unavoidably entail some memorization. Homemade flash cards and repeated writing of characters can be valuable memorization aids. Any- thing, including hanja , is easier to learn when approached as part of a meaningful context. Those already participating in a Korean language program can easily meld specific informa- tion about the 1,800 Basic Characters into their language materials. Those undertaking independent study can meld 16 INTRODUCTlON characters into available selections of written Korean . The vocabulary words accompanying each character in this book can also supply a measure of meaningful context. The 900 middle school characters in the appendix can be useful because the most common and frequently used characters appear in this list in the order they are first learned by Korean pupils. Early attention to radicals, the 214 characters under which all others are listed in hanja dictionaries, is recommended for all. Familiarity with the radicals is requisite to the full use of a dictionary, and many radicals are numbered among the discrete graphs which comprise all others. The radicals can be found in the radical index of this handbook. A student of hacia will find it valuable to develop the habit of estimating to which of the Six Categories a target character belongs since this will enable him to choose an appropriate learning strategy for it. Consult the preceding section of the Introduction for suggestions on learning strategies for each of the Six Categories of Chinese characters. The vast majority of characters, perhaps ninety percent of all hanja, belong to the Phonetic Compound category. Each graph of this type mntains an internal clue to its own pro- nunciation. One beginning student schooled himself to look for this internal phonetic clue, and, on a quiz, successfully matched readings to eleven of thirteen Phonetic Compounds he had not previously encountered. The student will be well advised to make it a practice to estimate the reading of a target character, whether newly-encountered or unrecalled, by assigning to it the pronunciation of its major component elements. A forthcoming handbook by the present editor will contain some 2,000 characters arranged in sets. Each graph in a set contains the same phonetic element and shares an identical or similar reading as well. The mnemonic value of a set of characters which both look and sound alike can be appreciated by perusing the following chart. lNTRODUCTJON Phonetic Compound Set EXPLANATION OF A SAMPLE CHARACI'ER ENTRY The character entry below is typical of the 1,800 in A Guide to Korean Characters. Sample Entry The main character of the sample entry, 2, is one of the Basic Hania taught in a11 Korean secondary schools. It appears first in a large-type, slightly-abbreviated form common in published material. In the box beneath the main character is listed the radical under which it can be found in a character dictionary. This radical is given in its unabbreviated form, while it may appear in the main character in its common, abbreviated form. (A chart of abbreviated radicals appears on page 348.) The number to the right of the radical indicates the number of strokes in the non-radical portion of the main character, datum that is vital when using a hanja dictionary. INTRODUrnON The 1,800 main entries are numbered consecutively. For 7, this number is 238. These character numbers are used in cross references and indices. To the right of the main character are nine squares in which its proper stroke order is progressively illustrated. The com- plete pen-written form of the main character occurs as the final entry in these squares. It is important to compare and contrast the written and printed forms of the main character since both will be encountered in reading materials. The formal definition, or hun, of the main character occurs in the upper left corner of the area following the writing models. The hun for the sample character is 2x1. This is followed to the right by English definitions of the main char- acter and by its reading, or u'm, in boldface hangiil. In the sample entry, this iim is xi. The hun and iim are ordinarily said together as a verbal means of identifying a character. Sample voc3bulary words comprise the remainder of the entry:These were selected on the basis of frequency of use in the language. Usually, three such words are included in an entry. The hanja typeface used for sample words is the stylized variation increasingly common in published material. Compare and contrast these with the main character typeface in an entry. A Guide to Korean Characters is designed to aid in learn- ing hangiil and hania . As a mini-dictionary, its English def- initions are not exhaustive. For the convenience of the reader and to exploit limited space, many English definitions appear in verbal, adjectival or adverbial form even though Korean referents may occur only as nouns. English definitions were purposely inserted between hanja entries and their hangiil readings in order to cause the eye of the reader to encounter first hanja and then its English mean- ing before coming to pronunciation. This arrangement may facilitate the learning process by obliging the reader to relate form and meaning for milliseconds before dealing with pro- nunciation. P=- 'f- 3 238 , 113 9x1 character, letter 4 *? character, letter, writing Ez\ @7 Sino-Koreancharacters, 9x1 Chinese characters ?$8, character dictionary 4 zd ' 17 , ' [...]... Korean middle and high schools Their formal name is "Basic Characters for Use in Classical Korean Instruction" (hanmun kyoylakyong kich'o hanja) Basic Hanja See Basic Characters Chinese Characters See Six Categories of Chinese Characters Classical Korean Classical Korean (hanmun) is classical Chinese used by Koreans as their written language for more than 1,500 years Hangiil Hangu'l is the modern name... drawn Simple Pictographs One of the Six Categories of Chinese characters, Simple Pictographs are drawings of objects They were the first characters fabricated by the ancient Chinese Sino -Korean Characters Chinese characters as they are used in the Korean language Six Categories of Chinese Characters A traditional classification of Chinese characters into six types accordmg to how they were originally... location; whereabouts &E& Bll many and few; some; quantity, amount good fortune, good luck kindness, humaneness S4 &31 4k L 8 +8 4x2 g senility, dotage *F +PI- 9% character, letter, writing Sino -Korean characters, Chinese characters character dictionary t life and death; existence 5 ~2 t@5j? 232 / - -7 - 3 2 7 barbarians; eastern 91 gg$& ss 01 barbarians; squat 3 # strange custom the eastern barbarians... the Korean alphabet promulgated in 1446 but not widely used until the present century Hanja See Sino -Korean Characters Ideograph An ideograph is a symbol representing an object or an idea but not the sound associated with that object or idea in spoken language Polysynthetic Polysynthesism is the grammatical practice in Korean of combining word elements into a single word that can be the equivalent... civilization; culture a literatus, a man of letters 33\ 39 9 *J a dry measure (18 liters, 3.97 gallons) + + E)J f Fj X %q monthly salary a monthly magazine, a monthly publication the end of the month, end 32 4- an authority, a luminary, a star measuring by pecks ( ~ 1 ) a@ a YJ a female ruffian; a rowdy 7%b *g- the planet Jupiter 4 strokes 4 strokes Ic ! 3 father and mother, sliced boiled meat $ ratio,... A piercing horizontal stroke is written last 5 A center stroke is written first, then the left and finally the right 6 An enclosure precedes its contents 7 Diagonals running to the left precede diagonals flowing to the right 8 A piercing perpendicular-strokeis written last GLOSSARY Basic Characters Basic Characters are the 1,800 hanja taught by order of the Ministry of Education since 1972 in all Korean. .. Ffia use, employ forms; stationery skin, the skin Emm superficial, shallow &% a conveyor belt purpose, object, goal EEI k cultivated land, fields means; source; permit 2~ contradiction contradictory terms 3% $% p+$ A\ marshal; display, set forth % ti arrows and stones t; the sexagenary cycle 4 "4 (in ancient warfare) $ % a poisoned arrow $ E; 9 bow and arrow +4 34 6 ,a kerosene 6 stone implement 0A Caucasian,... Two basic rules govern stroke order WRITING CHARACI'ERS A general rule of writing is to make the graphs of uniform size no matter how simple or complex they may be Hanja are listed in character dictionaries in ways inextricably related to stroke count (See How to Use a Character Dictionary, p.347.) A character must be written, therefore, with strokes of constant shape set down in unvarying order Details... equivalent of phrases or even a sentence in English Phonetic Compound One of the Six Categories of Chinese characters, Phonetic Compounds comprise some ninety percent of all characters They are semi-ideographic and semiphonetic Reading - The iim, or pronunciation, of a character is its reading Semantic Element A semantic element is that part of a Phonetic Compound, usually one-half the total character, which... sexagenary cycle of the 60 binary terms third class, third grade '+I 96 J 9% A 3 121 ' ; f' , transfer, hand over; commit to; pay f ask, solicit, request; charge +EL with, entrust with +j- remit, forward, send transfer, hand over, 3l+ pass along *+ '' A J - (dl& @ (& (h), Taoist immortal, fairy, genie fairy, nymph Taoist immortal; hermit, ascetic; a spirit hermit, ascetic; a spirit; Taoist immortal . hanja are made. A Simple Pictograph is easily learned by associating its shape and meaning. Category Two: Simple Diagrams Simple Diagrams were among the earliest characters made and. the ancient Chinese. Sino -Korean Characters. Chinese characters as they are used in the Korean language. Six Categories of Chinese Characters. A traditional classification of Chinese characters. hanja , is easier to learn when approached as part of a meaningful context. Those already participating in a Korean language program can easily meld specific informa- tion about the 1,800 Basic