korean hanja

[Xiumei]

Hi @ all!

Is anyone of you learning korean hanja? (chinese characters that are used in korean language)

I started to learn them this term (I study chinese and korean) and it's really interesting, because some of them are pronounced like in mandarin, others are completely different.

For example:

春: chun1, spring, is in korean also 춘 ch'un, that's the same pronounciation.

学: xue2, to learn, is in korean 학 hak - completely different.

do you know, why there are such differences? is there a chinese dialect that pronounces 学 like hak? Think, that's an exciting topic...

[Quest]

学 in Cantonese is "Hok". Mandarin lost most of the ending consonants in ancient Chinese.

Sounds that start with "x" in Mandarin are related to "h" in some other dialects.

Sounds that start with "j" in Mandarin are related to "g" in other dialects.

"h" is related to "f" and "w"

etc

[zh-laoshi]

Many Korean hanja were borrowed from differnt times and different areas of China. Some are just Korean words that have a character stuck with it.

Anyway, the Korean hanja are borrowed from the Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, pronounced as best could be by the Koreans. Therefore Cantonese 'hok' became Korean 'hak' And at one point, Korean also used tones and had a few extra letters in their alphabet that are no longer used. And when the tones and extra letters were discarded, it affected the way the words were pronounced (although not by much).

[Xiumei]

the other interesting thing about hanja is the meaning of combined characters, which is sometimes different from chinese.

one example:

in my chinese lessons I learnt that 多少 means "how much/many". in korea it's used for "more or less"

[skylee]

one example:

in my chinese lessons I learnt that 多少 means "how much/many". in korea it's used for "more or less"

Take a look at this Chinese-English dictionary -> http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/cgi-bin/agrep-lindict?query=%a6%68&category=wholerecord

20. 多少 [duo1shao3]' date=' adv. & adj. & n., (1) [b']more or less[/b]: 多少有關係 more or less related; also 多多少少; (2) how much: 多少錢 how much does it cost? or how much money? 多少歲 how old (is a person); 剩了多少 how much is left? 不知埋沒多少英雄好漢 has prevented the emergence of I do not know how many heroes.

[Quest]

Anyway, the Korean hanja are borrowed from the Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, pronounced as best could be by the Koreans.

Not necessarily these two, and not these two by strict definition. They borrowed from ancient Chinese, which is/are different from all the modern dialects.

[zh-laoshi]

I failed to mention it in this thread , but mentioned it in another thread