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!
One of my first posts on Sino-Korean and using Hanja to learn Korea was on 人 Hanja, which is where 인 in 인간 and many other words come from. While 人 is related to people, the Hanja we are covering today is also related, but more so about describing a person. 者 or 자 relates more to describing people with a specific job, characteristic, status, etc.. The breakdown of the Hanja from a lot of these comes out to “the one who __”.
This is something I saw coming up in a few words, but unlike others I have covered, it isn’t based on Hanja or Sino-Korean!
It’s been a while since I touched on Sino-Korean vocab! It’s something that’s always been there, but I’ve picked up on it more recently; many Korean electronics have a theme of using 전. Of course, this comes from Hanja influences with the Hanja 電 relating to electricity/electric words.
Tea is a classic drink with a long history, and Korea is no exception. Today I’ll dive a bit into the drink with vocab for the different kinds of tea in Korean, Korea’s culture and history with tea, some Sino-Korean, and more.
I’m back with more Sino-Korean! The 의 in 의미 meaning comes from the Hanja 意 which means thought/idea/opinion. You’ll see 의 in words related to meaning, intention, willingness, and even carelessness.
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.