Although Chinese characters aren't used in everyday life in Korea anymore, they are still crucial to your understanding of the Korean language: with the help of Hanjas, you can easily find patterns in the way Korean words and Chinese idioms (사자성어 — generally 4 syllable sentences made of Chinese characters) are built. Moreover, it can help you with your Korean vocabulary learning, since 70-80% of Korean words have Chinese origins. This post is aimed at intermediate level Korean learners who wish to better their vocabulary skills.
Korean words that come from Chinese (we call them sino-korean words) are usually composed of one or more Chinese characters. In Korean, these characters are all pronounced according to a Korean pronounciation, not Chinese. For example, the character "人", which means "person" in Chinese, is pronounced 인 in Korean. This does not mean that the word for "person" is 인 in Korean — since, as you all know, it's 사람 —, it simply means that when the syllable 인 pops up in a word, you can deduce that the word has something to do with the person, the being. For example, the word 한국인 is composed of the word for Korea, 한국, as well as the Hanja for "person", 인 — you can deduce that 한국인 means "Korean person."
Chinese characters were created thanks to a rule called 육서(六書), literally "Six Writings", which sorts Chinese characters into 6 types. Four of them are classified according to the structure of the character (called 체), meaning the way a character is built graphically. The last two are classified according to their usage (called 용).
Characters classified according to their structure 체
상형자: these are pictograms, meaning they are stylized drawings of an object — this object can be drawn from any angle, which might explain why they might be hard to recognize at first glance. The simplification of characters might also explain the reason why the object drawn does not look like reality, while still being classified as a pictogram. If you look at the way the same simplified character was written with the Oracle Bone Script (the very first Chinese script), you might be able to recognize the character more easily. For example:
These are two exemples of pictograms. Can you recognize the character for "rain" (비 우), with the rain falling on the windows, and the character for "fire" (불 화), representing flames? The drawings from left to right highlight the way the same character changed throughout the centuries. The far left corresponds to the Oracle Bone Script, while the one at the top corresponds to the more simplified version we use now.
지사자: ideograms are icons that generally express an abstract idea. Numbers from 1 to 3, for example, are represented respectively by 1 (一), 2 (二) and 3 (三) lines. They are pronounced 일, 이 and 삼 — familiar, right?
Among these, can you guess which one means "above", which one means "under" and which one means "middle"?
On the character on the left, you can see that the small horizontal line is above the long horizontal line: this character means "above", because the smaller line is above the longer line. On the other hand, on the far right character, you can see that the small line is under the long line so, you guessed it, this character means "under." The last character is made up of a square which is cut in the middle by a long line, so it is the character meaning "middle".
회의자: compound ideographs are some of the most interesting types of Chinese characters in my opinion. They are characters composed of two or more 지사자 or 상형자 in order to form another word. They are always composed of a key (부수), also called radicals. These keys are semantic indicators, meaning they are an indicator of the meaning of a character. (Example: 물 수氵is key 85 meaning "water". This key can be found in the phono-semantic compound character — cf. 형성자 —, 江. If you knew the meaning of key 85 before even seeing the character 江, you might be able to deduce that this character has something to do with water — and indeed, it is 강 강 江 meaning "river".)
-> 사람 인 人 (person) + 입 구 口 (entrance, gate) = 가둘 수 囚 (person stuck in an enclosure = a prisoner, a convict)
-> 나무 목 木 (tree) + 나무 목 木 + 나무 목 木 = 나무빽빼할 삼 森 (three trees together = forest)
형성자: phono-semantic compound characters are, as indicated by their name, a compound word made of a key (부수) — which gives us the meaning, so the semantic part of the character — as well as a phonetic component, which gives us roughly the sound of the character. To use an example we used before, the character 강 강 江 is composed of the semantic indicator 물 수氵, which relates to water, while 장인 공 工 (which is pronounced 공 by itself) is the phonetic component: so 江 means "river", and it is pronounced 강 (which is close to 공).
Note: 장인 공 工 means "labor, worker", so you can see the meaning of this component has nothing to do with the reason it is in the character — here, it is used purely for phonetic, not semantic, reasons.
Characters classified according to their usage 용
전주자: I'm not sure what to call them in English... they are simply characters whose meaning has evolved as time passes due to an extension of its meaning (we call that process 파생). This phenomenon can sometimes be paired with a change in pronounciation. For example, from "bad" (악알 악) to "hate" (미워할 오). Or from "music" (풍류 악) to "pleasure" (즐길 락) to "like" (좋아할 요).
가차자: these are sometimes called phonetic loans. They are characters that were once used to mean something else, but were borrowed because of their similar sound to another word and have now completely changed meaning. They might spring from : 1) a lack of existing character to write a word, which results in the use of another similar-sounding character or 2) an error made by accident or by ignorance. These are often used to transcript foreign words or names.
Hanja dictionaries are called 옥편. Let's take a look at the most famous, Naver Hanja Dic (네이버 한자사전):
In the search bar, you can choose to type the way a character is pronounced in Korean, but you can also copy-paste the Chinese character. Once you press enter, you will be able to see all of the Hanjas that correspond to your search.
A Hanja is always written this way : Korean equivalent to the Chinese word (which is called 훈 and corresponds to the meaning of the word) + pronounciation of the character (called 음). On the picture above, we have 사람 (the 훈, the meaning in Korean) followed by 인 (the 음, the way you pronounce the Hanja).
Bellow, you can see the key or radical (부수), which are very important to learn. Next to it, 획수 corresponds to the number of strokes needed to write the character. Right below, if you click on the small arrow-head, you can see the 획순, which is the stroke order (because stroke orders are very important when writing Chinese characters — they are not random). You might also see stroke order written as 필순.
Now, let's click on 사람 인 人. If you scroll down, you will find this: first, in what 육서 it is categorized (some characters have no 육서 written — some you can guess by yourself, others are just not categorized because we just don't know what category to put them in). Here, you can see that 사람 인 人 is a 성형자, meaning it is a drawing of a person. Then, followed by the little explanation, you can see the way its writing has evolved throughout the centuries, and the drawings they give help a lot in remembering the character.
How Hanjas Can Help Vocabulary Building
We now know that 인 人 means "person." By knowing that, can you guess the meaning of these words?
-> 인형 (with 형 形 meaning "shape, appearance")
-> 인종 (with 종 種 meaning "race")
-> 거인 (with 거 巨 meaning "large, enormous")
-> 군인 (with 군 軍 meaning "army, military")
-> 노인 (with 노 老 meaning "old")
(Answers: 인형 = doll, 인종 = human race, 거인 = giant, 군인 = soldier, 노인 = old person)
