::A Geek in Korea::

One of the most intimidating aspects of learning Korean isn’t learning Korean at all. It’s learning the Chinese characters (called Hanja) that Koreans also use occasionally. You’ll see Chinese characters on things like subway stations, newspapers, and in other public places. They also use them in dictionaries occasionally when multiple words have different meanings but are spelled the same. For example, the word "Bae" can mean  "Stomach", "Ship", and "Pear". It’s the context and Chinese character that let’s you know which it is you are talking about.

The Korean method of learning Chinese character is basically brute force memorization. Books with little squares, directions how to write the character, and lots of places to repeat the word until they know it. The amount that students learn now for middle school and high school is in correspondence with the college entrance requirements. My wife only took one year of mandatory Hanja lessons, which was all the was required at the time.Things seem to be different now, as I know of six year olds that study Chinese as well as English. There are dozens of Chinese language institutes that help students memorize the pesky characters. Korean people have told me the popularity of Chinese language schools is based on the hedging of their mutli-lingual bets about their country’s economic future.

Whatever the reason Koreans study Hanja I wanted to give it a chance on my own. It’s a bit of a casual exposure to another language that also lets me learn something that I’ll occasionally be able to use here in Korea too. People that study Korean and Japanese in university always complain about the amount of effort required to learn the borrowed Chinese characters used in those respective languages. I’m not planning on spending time studying Chinese characters used in Korean intensively, as I’m not enrolled in any language programs at the moment.

I’ve bought the book called "Learn Hanja the Fun Way". I have to agree with the linked review of the book, as it’s not aimed at people with no Korean at all. Sounds, as well as the vocabulary connected to the lessons is written in Korean, and the written practice requires you to know a fair bit. The reading comprehension dialogs at the end of the units seem like they’ll be a good challenge too, although it’s far more Hanja than I’ve ever seen written at one time on a Korean document.

There are great English explanations and pictograms that really help me. Each word in the book has the Chinese character, and it also has a cartoon drawing that encapsulates the meaning but also gives me a second way to remember the shape. I’ve actually been able to look at words, look at the Chinese and "get" the meaning without looking at the explanation at all. Since Chinese is a visual language first this seems to makes sense for some reason. Since Hanja is completely abstract for me, anything that lets me remember meanings without having to count lines and completely remember the shape is a great help. The sounds that accompany the words will have to come second for now.

I’m only learning out of curiosity, as well as a desire to improve my Korean. Plus, I find Chinese characters really mysterious and interesting for some reason. I think it has to do with the fact the the entire language is just so different. Korean has lost a bit of its exotic mystique after being here a while. I’d really, really love to meet someone with a Chinese tattoo and be able to read it on my own and see if they got it right. This is, of course, the cautious optimism I’m displaying now before I start learning the 400 or more characters in the book. I’m sure I’ll post later about my progress, or lack thereof in deciphering these characters before long.