Amanda Takes Off...

In the Korean School my daughter goes to, they learn several hundred hanja in the first grade. I think they start learning it in the last year of kindergarten. So, I don't understand the comment about "studying Hanja in middle school." There are 10 different steps (급) with about 100 hanja on each step that all elementary students learn.

Hmmm. At my school, my students didn't learn Hanja until sixth grade, and Good Man didn't learn it until middle school.

Some of the second and third grade students at our 학원 pull out Hanja workbooks before class. I've been told that it's their "school homework", although since that was said in English it may actually mean 학원 instead of 학교.

For we non-Korean speakers, is Hanja the Asian-language equivalent to Latin? As in, once you learn it, it helps with other language development?

That's interesting Paul. I remember reading some article (in English) about how Koreans were decrying pushing Hanja back into later grades to make room for English. I just asked Good Man again, and he said he didn't learn until middle school. I wonder if there's been some movement to change the national curriculum.

Mark, sorry for not explaining it. Hanja is Chinese characters. I just learned from Wikipedia that Korean, along with Japanese and Vietnamese, are "Sinoxenic" languages. This doesn't mean they're related directly to Chinese--instead is means that at one point these languages used (or still use) Chinese characters as a writing system. Before Korean had its own alphabet (Hangul), they used Chinese characters (what is called in Hanja in Korean) to write. Because of this, there is a large, large amount of vocab in Korean that is based on Chinese vocab.

For example, 불 (bool) is the pure Korean word for fire (and light). 火 is the Chinese character for fire and anger. It is pronounced (in Korean, at least) as "wha" and written in Korean as 화. BOTH of those roots are used in the Korean language.

불길 (bool-gil) is flame (lit. fire road). 불꽃 (bool-ggot) is flame and also fireworks (lit. fire flower).

On the 화/火 side, we have 화약 (written in Korean), which could be written in Hanja as 火藥, and which is pronounced as "hwa-yak." It means gunpower (lit. fire medicine). 화성/火星/wha-seong, Mars (lit. fire star).

You can also combine pure Korean and Sino-Korean things--산불 is "mountain fire" and combines Sino-Korean (산/山/san) with that pure Korean fire/light root.

Like knowing Latin, if you can learn the roots, you can guess at some of the vocabulary. A few days ago I couldn't remember 발견하다 (bal-gyeon-ha-da). I knew 견/gyeon meant seeing something from a whole list of other words I know. So I was able to use that to remember it was "to discover."

Now, in real life, Hanja isn't used too much any more AT MY KOREAN LEVEL. Many newspapers still write in mixed script, so someone might wonder why I would care to learn the Hanja. But there are times that Hanja is used in real life--sizes at restaurants, numbers, dates...

And hell, I find learning Hanja really fun, so I decided to get a kid's book dedicated to it. The book uses illustrations to help you remember the shape of the Hanja. I'll post a picture.

Oh yeah, and randomly enough, a lot of stuff in taekwondo is actually based on the shape and meaning of Hanja, too. So I find it interesting for that, too.

President Park Chung Hee banned teaching Hanja in K-12 education in 1970. A couple of years later he relented by allowing it to be taught in middle schools and high schools, but not in elementary schools. Some changes in law during the 1990's made it possible for Hanja to be taught in elementary school level, but it's not a part of the mandatory curriculum. (I did learn Hanja in one elementary school during the '70's and '80's, but then again it was a private school.)

I'm kind of conflicted about teaching Hanja to kids. On one hand, Hanja provided roots and origins for so many Korean words and phrases, so learning it can be beneficial. On the other hand, I think it's only beneficial to learn it after you reach a certain level in Hangeul first, so I'm not so sure about teaching it in elementary schools. I also think that mastering Hanja is not as useful as it used to be, or as some Hanja proponents believe it is. One point that Hanja proponents try to push is that knowing Hanja can ease written communication with other Far Eastern countries. But Koreans use traditional forms of Hanja, while the Chinese and the Japanese use simplified forms, so using Hanja to try to communicate with the Chinese doesn't work beyond the most basic characters.

Then again, my kids aren't going to school in Korea, so I don't think my opinion counts for much anyway.

SKFK--thanks for the really informative post. That helps clear things up! I do remember reading in that cartoon book...um...KOREA UNMASKED, and reading that Koreans are "so extreme" that they still use these old, more difficult forms of Hanja, whereas "even China" has switched to simplified ones.

Not sure if this counts as a whole movement to change the national curriculum, but Brian in Jeollanam-do came across a relevant article on the subject last summer.

http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2008/07/korean-language-proficiency-drops.html

Wow, that was a very interesting comment, SKFK!

I studied Chinese for a year, and our university's official policy was to spend a year teaching traditional characters before switching over to instruction in simplified characters. I do prefer traditional more, as I usually find it easier to remember meanings that way. (Then again, they are also the ones I learned first!) And just for the record, traditional characters are still the official system used in the Republic of China (Taiwan), Hong Kong, and Macau.

Ah yes! That's the article I remember reading. I'm going to edit this post to link to it. Thanks!