Talk:Hanja/Archive 1

Chinese & Korean pronunciation
Korean and Chinese are completely different languages, no doubt that pronounciations are different. Is it meaningful to compare them in the article? wshun 20:28, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)


 * When they borrowed the characters, they also borrowed some pronunciation. e.g., Daehan Min-guk is Dahan Min-guo in Chinese. --Menchi 20:36, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)


 * Which dialect of Chinese? ;-) --Rschmertz 21:00, Sep 13, 2003 (UTC)


 * I used modern Mandarin Chinese to compare. But Mandarin has since the borrowing time dropped all final consonants except n & ng -- the finals are still visible in Cantonese Chinese: Daa-hon Man-gwok. --Menchi 21:54, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)


 * I was going to say the same thing. In fact, I'm fairly sure that the pronunciation of every hanja comes from a foreign source, usually a dialect of Chinese, perhaps Japanese in some cases (not sure about that last part).  I suspect the disparate pronunciation of the character for "woman" more likely arises from a different point of contact with Chinese culture at the time when Koreans were using Chinese characters to write Korean, as opposed to simply using Chinese directly as the language of writing.  Don't forget, also, that languages evolve.  A word borrowed five hundred years ago could have changed pronunciation in both languages by now.  Yet the paragraph on Hanja, as it is currently written, seems to imply that Koreans used Chinese characters in some cases for native Korean words, which I'm fairly sure has never happened (though I was never sure how to pronounce the "shin" character you sometimes see stamped on advertisements to indicate a product is new; "shin" by itself does not mean "new" in Korean). Rschmertz 20:55, Sep 13, 2003 (UTC)


 * The "woman" case is in fact due to divergent evolution (Lee and Ramsey, 73). I've corrected it. The original pronunciation of "woman" is revealed when it is a non-initial element, e.g. nam-nyeo (&#30007;&#22899; "Men and women"). Likewise,
 * yeon (&#24180; "year") = Chinese: nian; BUT, sin-nyeon (&#26032;&#24180; "New Year") = Chinese: xin-nian
 * ik (&#21311; "hide") = Chinese: nì; BUT, un-nik (&#38577;&#21311; "concealment") = Chinese: yin-ni
 * Native Korean pronunciation-Hanzi also fixed.
 * Do you shin (not with the Hanja &#26032;) mean something else, or that shin (with the Hanja &#26032;) does not mean "new" or "fresh" in Korean now?
 * --Menchi 21:54, 13 Sep 2003 (UTC)


 * Your sentence about "shin" is a little messed up, I'm afraid, so I'm not sure what you mean, but let me explain, though it is sort of difficult. The hanja "&#26032;" is pronounced "shin" in Korean.  It means "new" in Korean in the same sense that "neo" means "new" in English.  You can't say, "I think it's time to get a neo car", in English, but we use it to mean "new" in terms like "neo-conservative", "neologism", etc. Similarly, Koreans do not say "shin cha sasseo" for "I bought a new car"; they say "sae cha sasseo", "sae" in this case being a pure Korean word for "new" (and, totally off-topic, one of two adjectives I'm aware of in the Korean language that are not verbs).  Nonetheless, they use the "&#26032;" hanja in advertisement-type literature -- not in a sentence where "sae" would normally be used, but all by itself.  I don't remember if I ever asked a Korean how this should be pronounced; I suspect somehow that the answer is that it is not to be pronounced, just read.


 * You also see the characters for "small, middle, large" (&#23567;, &#20013;, &#22826;) used this way. Except the last character here is wrong; for some reason, my Korean input software crashes whenever I try to produce the hanja for &#45824;, so I had to use the closest alternative :-P


 * This is coming rather late, however, I have only just noticed thate the person before me posted small, middle, and large, then put the hanja characters beside it in brackets. However, as they said, that is not the correct character for "large." 太 means "wife" or "sun". The proper hanja for "big" should be 大. --Hyung-Qing Hong


 * Thanks for the fix on "yeo". BTW, I've edited your spelling of Korean a bit here.  Hope you don't mind.--Rschmertz 08:01, Sep 14, 2003 (UTC)

I've actually seen both jeong-o and ojeong being used in Korean to mean "noon", and in fact I prefer the form jeong-o myself, as a native speaker. Should that be mentioned? --Iceager


 * Oh yeah, thanks for the info. I've added it. It's very relevant. I was under the impression that Koreans only used "ojeong". --Menchi 00:24, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

Hanja is Hancha in McCune-Reischauer.
Hanja, when it means Chinese character, is actually Hancha in McCune-Reischauer. It was written in the article that Hanja is


 * Often erroneously spelled as "Hancha" in McCune-Reischauer ["nch" gets assimilated to "nj" in that system]

This is incorrect. In McCune-Reischauer, pronunciation is followed (because "Pronunciation takes precedence over (1) spelling and (2) romanization rules", in this case (2) the n+ch = nj rule), i.e. "j" when voiced, and "ch" when unvoiced. When &#54620;&#51088; means Chinese character, the &#12616; is glottalised (and therefore becomes unvoiced) to the &#12617; sound, a change that doesn't follow usual glottalisation rules, but which is well documented in dictionaries. It is unvoiced, hence "ch" is used. When &#54620;&#51088; represents measure, the &#12616; is, as would usually be the case, voiced, and so in this case it is still "Hanja" in McCune-Reischauer. (Note that however it is not the glottalised romanisation that is used; hence &#51032;&#44284; &#365;ikwa, although it also has an exceptional glottalisation, so we don't write Hantcha.) Check these guidelines.

In Revised Romanization, of course, "ch" only represents the aspirated sound, so there is no such problem.

-- KittySaturn 07:31, 1 March 2005 March (UTC)

On-line Hangul-Hanja automatic converter
I would like to ask if any one knows any available on-line Hangul-Hanja automatic converter.--Jusjih 17:02, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Although a Hanja-Hangul converter could be easily implemented, I'm not sure the other way around would be so simple to create, depends on how good the AI would be to interpret common vocabulary and syntax in a sentence. (Allegedly, similar systems work quite well for Japanese.) 惑乱 分からん 01:22, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Yahoo! Korea has an online encyclopedia/dictionary you can use to convert hangul to hanja, but it only works on words. Enter your query and click on "사전". --KJ 00:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Naver.com has something like that too (actually most Korean search engine (Daum, Paran) have one). --Kbarends 15:31, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Hap Ki Do vs. Ai Ki Do
On the page it lists "Hap Ki Do" as the Korean form of "Aikido" but this is not the case. I've taken both and they are very different martial arts and have different pages here. --Nachtrabe 18:50, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The two martial arts are totally different, that's true, but the meaning of hapkido in korean is equal to the meaning of aikido in Japanese. --Kbarends 15:33, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Proportion?
If I pick up a newspaper in South Korea, what proportion of characters will be Hanja? How about in a normal novel, an academic journal or a code of law? Thanks, AxelBoldt 06:44, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Newspaper: depends on the newspaper. In the "tabloid press", as you might call it, the percentage is probably 1% or less; in whatever their equivalent of the WSJ is, could go as high as 50% (I'm really just guessing here -- I'm sure it would have been that high or higher 20-30 years ago, but not sure now).  Normal novel: 0%.  Academic journal/code of law: probably similar to the "WSJ"-type newspaper.  I'm not in Korea, so I don't have access to these sorts of things to check out, but you can trust me about the normal novel and tabloid newspapers.  --Rschmertz 06:26, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Replacement by hangul
The last paragraph of the intro (IIRC) mentions when Hangul really began to replace Hanja. Then the rest of that paragraph is about its use (or non-use) in North Korea. What about South Korea? Kind of an unbalanced paragraph as it is. --Rschmertz 07:26, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Hanja=Han language in Turkish and Turkic languages
It fits perfectly since it is the writing system of Han Chinese. Could it be just coincidence, or does anyone know the connection?
 * Interesting, but the "ja" in Hanja comes from the Chinese character meaning "character" or "letter," not language. --Reuben 07:04, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Retention of labial codas for syllables with labial onsets
Regarding this quote:
 * In other aspects, the pronunciation of Hanja is more conservative than most Chinese dialects, for example in the retention of labial consonant codas in characters with labial consonant onsets, such as the characters 法 (법 beop) and 凡 (범 beom); the labial codas existed in Middle Chinese but do not survive intact in most Chinese varieties today, except conservative southern varieties like Cantonese and Min.

Not sure about Min, but it's definitely not true for Cantonese. There are no Cantonese syllables which retain a labial initial consonant and a labial final consonant. There are 泵 and 乓 (read bam1), but I'm pretty confident neither of those had a labial initial + labial final in Middle Chinese. I double-checked CUHK's Cantonese pronunciation database on initials b, m, p, w, and even f (a labiodental rather than a labial) to make sure; those two characters I mentioned are the only examples of this kind of pronunciation. Anyone know better for Min? cab 13:38, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Cognitive processing of Hanja
Read an interesting paper on the cognitive processing of hanja, wonder if we can work this into the article somehow. Basically, it's about a class of experiments in which subjects are given a category and, when presented with a word, have to quickly decide whether the word belongs to the category. When this was done on Chinese subjects, it found that response times were slower and error rates higher for hanzi of words which did not belong to the category but which were visually similar to words which did; however, no such effect was observed for hanzi of words which did not belong to the category but which were homophones of words which did.

In the case of the Korean experiment, the author took a group of university students and divided them into "skilled" and "less-skilled" hanja readers. The more-skilled readers showed a pattern similar to the Chinese students (errors/slowness on visually-similar hanja, but not phonologically-similar hanja), but the less-skilled readers also showed a higher error rate on phonologically-similar hanja. The author's conclusion was that "phonology plays a prominent role in the processing of logographic hanja for the less-skilled readers, but not for the skilled readers. See cab 01:32, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Doesn't that just show that the less-skilled hanja readers didn't know all of the characters involved, or their meanings? Without having read the article, it sounds like it could be a matter of remembering the characters, rather than the cognitive mechanisms of recognizing and processing symbols.  --Reuben 01:51, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Comments moved from education section to talk page
"about 100 fewer than Kanji" NOTE TO EDITOR: This comparison is misleading because Kanji is primarily 'Simplified Chinese' and Hanja is primarily 'Traditional Chinese'. The wikipedia article on 'Chinese Characters' addresses this, but it's general knowledge. Also, why bother comparing to just Kanji? Why not Taiwanese? I think this is suggestive, and better left out or placed elsewhere.
 * Kanji is not traditionally "simplified Chinese". Most of the forms match with traditional Chinese, a small percentage match with simplified Chinese, and an even smaller percentage are Japan-only simplifications. But that's not what this is talking about; the statement is about the NUMBER of characters taught, not their FORM. There are 1945 Jouyou Kanji, IIRC, so 1800 Kanji is pretty clearly 145 less than that. cab 00:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * This still does not address the question. Why just compare to the number taught in Japan? Why not elsewhere? Until that question is answered, this reference to kanji is best left elsewhere (maybe in the wiki article on 'Kanji'). Again, this is an article about Hanja, not how much more Japanese students, do/don't learn. In any regard, it's a different system, which does not seem to be a point of debate. --Jh98105 13:49, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * You are certainly welcome to add the information about the number in other places. According to the same source I see for the 1800 number, 2000 are taught in North Korea; I also recall 3000 being thrown around as an average number for Chinese university students. Anyway, these numbers are important to provide context, since many people coming to this article may know nothing about Chinese characters at all except something they read in some newspaper about the Kangxi dictionary having 47,000 characters. Also, what's the relevance of the fact that it's a "different system"? The characters themselves are almost exactly the same; the fact that the Japanese removed strokes from some characters hardly means they suddenly face a much easier task learning and using 1945 characters (compared to Koreans who learn, and then rarely/never use, 1800). cab 22:43, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * There are lots of information that can be added to an article, such as those you mentioned above about how many Chinese students learn. Context is most helpful if it's on point, and kanji/chinese/hanja are materially different. A few strokes matter a great deal in Chinese-derived script, as you know. These are what distinguish 'traditional chinese', 'simplied chinese', and kanji, for that matter.--Jh98105 15:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Why would you need a citation for something like this? People can clearly study hanja at the university level, which is being questioned here. Is the person requesting the citation looking for a course listing at a university?
 * A citation is needed for both the amount of Hanja taught and for the fact that they can study it at the university. Anyway it's better if all information has inline citations to reliable sources. Though I didn't add the citation tag, I for one find it surprising that you can specifically study hanja at the tertiary level, unless as a calligraphy class; you would be hard-pressed to get degree credit for a university course in spelling in the US, for example, and when I was attending university in Hong Kong I didn't notice any hanzi courses listed either. cab 00:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The scope of the statement is much broader than your interpretation. It relates to post-secondary education. Education can mean a major, yes, but it can also mean classes related to hanja. Your educational experience in Hong Kong has little bearing on this section on Korean post-secondary education in Hanja (unless your experience relates to Hanja taught in Hong Kong).--Jh98105 15:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Look, the point is that the statement is surprising, and so should have an inline citation, which I have since added. I'm not trying to "prove" that there's no tertiary Hanja education in Korea, but to tell you the reasons why someone might want verification of the statement. When an editor puts a fact tag on a statement, it isn't because he's trying to sabotage the article; it's generally because, in good faith, he thinks a statement needs stronger verification and wants to be pointed to the exact place where an expert said it. If you disagree with that opinion, it's in general not because the original editor is lying about the statement needing a fact tag, but because you're more familiar with the material in question. It is NOT good form to remove such tags without providing inline citation. I find it very surprising that you have such low standards citation in one sentence, but then suddenly extremely higher standards one sentence later. cab 22:43, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I think someone provided a citation, so this is moot. I thank the person who took the time and effort to find and share this revelation. It's definitely OK to have personal doubts, but does it seem so unreasonable that there are courses in hanja in universities in Korea? General or reasonably certain facts don't conventionally call for a citation, unless it's necessary to prove a point. I think the broader issue of what citations are for and the burden of action. Generally, if the individual is that skeptical about something obvious, can't she look for it on her own? Still, I see your point about protocol.--Jh98105 15:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

(NOTE TO EDITOR: Again, a totally misleading reference. An unscientific sample at one university done by a broadcaster with no details on how it was conducted should not be cited as sufficient evidence to suggest the preceding about 'students' in general. There are articles noting high levels of kanji illiteracy in Japan, such as New York Times in January 2002 and http://www.kh.rim.or.jp/~nagamura/literacy.html, for instance, but these should not be stated in an encyclopedia as a general assessment about the state of affairs without a far more formal evidence. It also implicates the validity of other sections in this article. There are less authoritative forums for this information. This should be deleted until there is more evidence that is less tabloid. If you must keep it, then at least make the statement more accurate: New students surveyed at one university in Korea cannot write ...etc. The accurate statement, however, does not sound like encyclopedic material, which goes to the protest.)
 * "New York Times in January 2002" is not a citation, and the other URL you point to doesn't even mention Korea. but Japan. In contrast, the cited article clearly describes that it was an examination of their own students, and the text points out that it was one university. "one 2007 survey by Sungkyunkwan University of 380 freshmen". There is also the quote at : In 1956 Gray's Korean subjects read this type of mixed script faster than the pure phonetic hangul, but 20 years later, Noh Hwang Park & Kim (1977, cited by Taylor & Taylor, 1983: 90) found that hangul was read faster - a difference which may be due to the decreasing familiarity of hanja. And that was 30 years ago. Matches with my own experience doing language exchange with Korean students around my own age. cab 00:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The issue was not that the study was done at one university or the conclusions. The issue is that there is no information on the specifics of the study itself, and this small, anonymous study is used in the article to make a general statement.
 * The 'citation' you seek was a note to editors to illustrate that there are all sorts of claims out there. Not all should be used to describe a general state of affairs, especially in an encyclopedia. Keep such things for blogs. Your citations above are helpful, and they provide a basis for statements like the following: Koreans read hangul faster than mixed script with hanja. This, however, is not the statement made in the article.--Jh98105 15:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Moved the disputed information here. I find your characterisation of it as a "tabloid story" rather dishonest. cab 22:43, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * However, commentators worry that students do not retain what they have been taught; one 2007 survey by Sungkyunkwan University of 380 of their own freshmen showed that 20% could not write their own names in hanja, while 77% could not write their father's name and more than 99% could not write the word "lecture" (강의/講義).
 * There are many different stories on SBS of varying quality and sensationalism. The link is definitely more 'tabloid' than 'academic'. The other citations above seem more appropriate for the article.--Jh98105 15:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Non-Chinese hanja
In light of my recent revert, it'd be great if we could give a better idea of just how many (current use) Hanja were invented in Korea, and how many are imported from Japan. The recently added Hanja is a start, but perhaps the scope could be widened. --Rschmertz 06:18, 22 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I was under the impression that all hanja were borrowed from Chinese, if there are such that were "invented" in Korea, I'm sure they are rare, and probably not worth making an article for. However, that is just my opinion, and if anyone else has any other say, let me know! --Hyung-Qing Hong —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.230.13.247 (talk) 02:20, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

chinese characters
they are not only used in china, korea, and japan, but also in singapore, hk, taiwan.


 * I think for our perposes, we have included Hong Kong, and Taiwan as part of China. I'm sure that the main 3 countries to use hanja are China, Korea, and Japan. If it is not mentioned in the article that these are the 3 main, I'll go and add it in, otherwise, I don't think it nessicary to write in ALL the countries to use hanja. --Hyung-Qing Hong —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.230.13.247 (talk) 02:23, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Inaccuracies regarding Hanja and its uses
I am writing here, because of some changes I would like to make. Alot of the information posted regarding Hanja is either inaccurate or patently false. Many of these so called uses of Hanja, are completely wrong. Hanja is never used to clarify ambiguous words. I dont know where the hell this came from.Aneconomist (talk) 20:54, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Im editing education. What im doing is removing patent lies with no sources. For one, hanja has NEVER EVER been compulsory. EVER. I cannot say it another way. Hanja has never been a requirement either.PatentLies (talk) 23:41, 24 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The Education section in fact cites Hannas and Brown books mentioned at the end of the article. So this is not a valid reason to delete that section. Instead of deleting, please offer valid academic sources which contradict what is stated in the article, and rewrite the article to conform with what those sources say. Thanks, cab (talk) 04:20, 25 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, if PatentLies and Aneconomist are the same editor, may I suggest you restrict yourself to using a single account per WP:SOCK. Thanks, cab (talk) 04:21, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Also possibly Inincognito.
 * Bathrobe (talk) 05:41, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

The entire first paragraph of education has ZERO citations. The only citations are about North Korea's education system, which is patently false. Right now they teach about 300 Hanja, yet this paragraph states they use more than 1800? In case you haven't actually read the article it states North korean colleges using Hanja? I dont think so. Inincognito (talk) 04:46, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Inincognito may be a sockpuppet of the other two deletionist accounts. kwami (talk) 07:05, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
 * All three accounts have been blocked indefinitely. kwami (talk) 10:40, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

'city of water'
水都 — 'city of water' (e.g. Hong Kong and Naples)

Sorry, I don't understand "city of water" from those examples. A port? A city by the sea? jnestorius(talk) 23:43, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Fake hanja
There is an example of hanja here which refers to the so called korean word "hani",

>"hani" in modern Korean, that means "does, and so".

The word hani does not exist in the Korean language. It does not mean does or so. It does not mean anything.

As such Im removing it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Subvertmsm (talk • contribs) 02:02, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

inaccurate translations
"sarang ae" Sarang hae means "i love you". Saram means person in Korean, however no one says Saram when they say "i love you" to someone. Sarang is a verb Saram is a noun. Hae/ae does not mean in, it means do. When someone says i love you its Sarang hae not Saram hae. This is just another example of the editor of this page' incompetence and inadequate knowledge of the subject.Truepropagnda (talk) 23:49, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Um, no-one wrote any of that. Please read the paragraph again. You can go to any school, library, or bookshop in Korea and pick up a dictionary which says the same thing. kwami (talk) 00:32, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I can't find anywhere in the paragraph that says sarang means "person", or that saram means "love". I'm not sure what you're talking about. Or maybe the problem is that you can't read the characters 愛 and 人. (I think the paragraph should be made clearer for people who don't understand hanja.)
 * Bathrobe (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 03:43, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Hanja was a requirement at some point
Ok, someone pointed out that Hanja was never a requirement. This is not true. It used to be a requirement for high schoolers required to learn 1800. Plus, you need to also know if you want to get certain jobs and nowadays there is even 한자자격증(Hanja competence), which is required for students in certain law or other field.

신문Sinmun(新闻) 보도bodo(报道) is chinese and 뉴스nyuseu(news) is english,most so called change just change another boot to lick
this is really low for a nation's behavior

no really difference between kbs뉴스 or kbs신문,they are both not korean, korean have no their own words for most of things, even daily important things have no korean word ,large portion of korean words just plain other language use korean to pronounce, and korea people claim its korean shamelessly

basically korean change their words for real ruler of korea, now america rule korea so they just try really hard to change chinese word into english word