Sino-Korean or Korean words with a hanja basis make up a lot of Korean words! Estimates guess it can range from 50-70% of Korean vocabulary. Here I help teach you Korean words using Sino-Korean without needing to know or study hanja!
After getting down Sino-Korean and native numbers, another hurdle is right there for beginners- Korean counters. Counter particles have to be attached to the word you are counting and it isn’t as simple as a universal counter.
There are a lot of different counter particles to be used for animals, people, books, glasses, and more. Each is either paired with sino or native numbers. Today I’ll cover the most popular and widely used ones!
不 means “not” and is very much like not, non-, un-, dis-, etc. in English! It generally appears in Korean as 불 or 부 at the front of a word. With that said Let’s get into some negative Hanja words! I’ll start out by breaking some of the words down, so you get the 2-for-1 combo~
A while ago I touched on Korean body vocab, now it’s time to dive deeper and go inside the body to the organs! I’ll cover Korean organ vocab from internal and external, along with bones, muscles, and more.
Konglish comes from Korean + English and is the term used to refer to Korean loanwords from English. But there are more words in Korean grabbed from than just English! The biggest would be Chinese which is the origin of Sino-Korean words and numbers, which you can learn more about in my Sino-Korean introductory post.
You may have noticed 문 come up often when learning about writing or culture in Korean. From 문화 meaning to 문학 they are tied to a hanja of course! The hanja 文 means culture and literature/writing so you will see it in a lot of literature vocab in Korean.
The 생 in 인생 Meaning comes from the Hanja 生 which meaning is tied to life and living. You’ll find 생 in a lot of words; from a social life, birth, and even over to students!
If you’ve been learning about terms for outer space in Korean you might have noticed 성 pop up multiple times, 성 has Sino-Korean origins and uses the hanja 星 which means a star or planet. You’ll especially see it for planets in our solar system which all, excluding earth, end with 성 and have their own meaning for their names!
You probably already know the 4 seasons but seasons in Korean can go more in-depth than that! Following the Chinese lunar calendar Korea’s traditional calendar has a solar system for seasons too, spaced approx. 15 days apart these dates mark specific points in the seasons.
식 is a reoccuring piece in many Korean food words and that’s because it has sino-Korean and hanja origins. 식 comes from 食 which means meal and food. So let’s get into some of the words that it comes up in!
Let’s get into a quick & easy Sino-Korean lesson! 年 (년) is the Chinese and Sino-Korean character used to say year in Korean. It is used for year vocab and also vocab related to age and generations.