Hanja

Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters (Mandarin Chinese:Hànzì). More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with the Chinese pronunciation adjusted to fit Korean phonetics. Hanja-mal or hanja-eo refers to words which can be written with hanja, and hanmun refers to Classical Chinese writing, although "hanja" is sometimes used loosely to encompass these other concepts.

Hanja are almost entirely identical to traditional Chinese characters, although a few are variants that are also used in Japanese kanji. "Hanja" is a cognate of the Chinese "hanzi" and the Japanese "kanji".

Today, hanja are not used to write native Korean words, and even hanja-eo are usually written with the native hangul script.

History

A major impetus for the introduction of Chinese characters into Korea was the spread of Buddhism. The major Chinese text that introduced Hanja to Koreans, however, was not a religious text but the Chinese text, Cheonjamun (Thousand Character Classic). Chinese characters were later introduced to the Japanese language, and there are historical similarities in the development of the hanja and kanji in their respective writing systems.

There were some systems developed to use simplified forms of Chinese characters that phonetically transcribe Korean, namely, hyangchal (향찰; 鄕札), gugyeol (구결; 口訣), and idu (이두; 吏讀), but for the most part Koreans had to learn Classical Chinese to be properly literate.

One way of adapting Hanja to write Korean in such systems (such as Gugyeol) was to represent native Korean grammatical particles and other words solely according to their pronunciation. For example, Gugyeol uses the characters 爲尼 to transcribe the Korean word "hăni", "hani" in modern Korean, that means "does, and so". However, in Chinese, the same characters are read as the expression "wéi ní," meaning "becoming a nun." This is a typical example of Gugyeol words where the radical (爲) is read in Korean for its meaning (hă — "to do") and the suffix 尼, ni (meaning 'nun'), used phonetically. This system is similar to that of manyogana in Japanese.

Hanja was the sole means of writing Korean until King Sejong the Great invented hangul in the 15th century. However, even after the invention of hangul, most Korean scholars continued to write in hanmun.

It was not until the 20th century that hangul truly replaced hanja. Officially, hanja has not been used in North Korea since June 1949 (and additionally, all texts become horizontally written instead of vertically), because Kim Il Sung considered it an icon of Japanese occupation and an impediment to literacy. Additionally, many words borrowed from Chinese have been replaced with "pure" Korean words. However, there are still a large number of Chinese-borrowed words in widespread usage in the North (although written in Hangul), and hanja characters still appear in special contexts. They also still appear in recent North Korean dictionaries ^*.

Character formation

Each hanja is composed of one of 214 radicals plus in most cases one or more additional elements. The vast majority of hanja use the additional elements to indicate the sound of the character, but a few hanja are purely pictographic, and some were formed in other ways.

Eumhun (meaning and sound)

In modern Korean, when a hanja appears as a word or part of a word, it is invariably pronounced by its sound. To aid in understanding a character, however, character dictionaries and school textbooks refer to each character not only by its sound but also by its meaning. This dual meaning-sound reading of a character is called eumhun (음훈; 音訓; from 音 "sound" + 訓 "meaning," "teaching").

For example, the character 愛 is referred to in character dictionaries as sarang ae (사랑 애), where sarang is the word for "love" (the character's meaning) and ae is its sound. Similarly, the character 人 is read as referred to as saram in (사람 인), where "saram" means "person" and "in" is its sound. When the two characters are put together to form the word 愛人, they are simply read as aein (애인; pronounced "ay-in"), and denote the idea of a beloved or sweetheart ("love" + "person").

The word or words used to denote the meaning are often—though hardly always— words of native Korean (i.e., non-Chinese) origin, and are sometimes archaic words no longer commonly used. For example, the character 山 is referred to as me san or moe san (메산, pronounced "meh sahn"; or 뫼산, pronounced "moeh sahn"), where me or moe is an archaic word for "mountain," almost entirely supplanted by the Chinese-derived word san.

This dual sound-meaning concept is similar but not identical to the Japanese on and kun readings of Kanji, whereby a character may be read according to its Chinese-derived sound (on) or its native Japanese meaning (kun).

Education

Hanja are still taught as courses (that have recently become non-compulsory) in South Korean high schools. Hanja education begins in grade 7 (junior high school) and continues until graduation from senior high school in grade 12. A total of 1800 Hanja (about 100 fewer than Kanji) are taught: 900 for junior high, and 900 for senior high (starting in grade 10). Post-secondary Hanja education continues in some liberal arts universities.

The 1972 promulgation of basic Hanja for educational purposes was altered in December 31, 2000 to replace 44 Hanja with 44 others. The choice of characters to eliminate and exclude caused heated debates prior to and after the 2000 promulgation.

In Korean language and Korean studies programs at universities around the world, a sample of Hanja is typically a requirement for students. Becoming a graduate student in these fields usually requires students to learn at least the 1800 basic Hanja.

In North Korea, all high school students have been required to learn Hanja since 1968, even though by then the use of Hanja had already been abolished for 20 years. North Korean President Kim Il Sung said that "It is not necessary to use Hanja. However, since Chinese characters are used in China, Japan and South Korea, there is a need to learn them." Unlike in the South, only about 600 are taught. However the policy of usually not using Hanja has not changed.

Current uses of Hanja

Because many different Hanja—and thus, many different words written using Hanja —often share the same sounds, two distinct Hanja words (hanjaeo) may be spelled identically in the phonetic Hangul alphabet. Thus, Hanja are often used to clarify meaning, either on their own without the equivalent Hangul spelling, or in parentheses after the Hangul spelling as a kind of gloss. Hanja are often also used as a form of shorthand in newspaper headlines, advertisements, and on signs. Some details of use follow.

Hanja in print media

Hanja are used most frequently in academic literature, where they often appear without the equivalent Hangul spelling. Usually, only those words with a specialized or ambiguous meaning are printed in Hanja. In books and magazines, Hanja are generally used sparingly, and only to gloss words already spelled in Hangul when the meaning is ambiguous. Hanja are often used in newspaper headlines as abbreviations or to eliminate the ambiguity typical of newspaperese in any language. Hanja appear frequently in dictionaries and atlases; see below.

Hanja in dictionaries

In modern Korean dictionaries, all entry words of Sino-Korean origin are printed in Hangul and listed in Hangul order, with the Hanja given in parentheses immediately following the entry word. (A similar practice is followed in Japanese dictionaries.) This practice helps to eliminate ambiguity, and it also serves as a sort of shorthand etymology, since the meaning of the Hanja and the fact that the word is composed of Hanja often help to illustrate the word's origin.

As an example of how Hanja can help to clear up ambiguity, many homophones are written in Hangul as 수도 (sudo), including:

修道 "spiritual discipline"
受渡 "receipt and delivery"
囚徒 "prisoner"
水都 "'city of water'" (e.g. Hong Kong and Naples)
水稻 "rice"
水道 "drain"
隧道 "tunnel"
首都 "capital (city)"
手刀 "hand-knife"

Hanja dictionaries (Sajeon (사전, 辭典) or Okpyeon (옥편, 玉篇)) are organized by radicals, like Hanzi and Kanji.

Hanja in personal names

Korean personal names generally use Hanja, although exceptions exist. Korean personal names usually consist of a one-character family name (seong, 姓) followed by a two-character given name ("ireum"). There are a few 2-character family names (eg 南宮, Namgung), and the holders of such names — but not only them — tend to have one-syllable given names. Traditionally, the given name in turn consists of one character unique to the individual and one character shared by all people in a family of the same sex and generation (돌림자, dollimja). Things have changed, however, and while these rules are still largely followed, some people have given names that are native Korean words (popular ones include "Haneul" — meaning "heaven" or "sky" — and "Iseul" — meaning "dew"). Nevertheless, on official documents, people's names are still recorded in both Hangul and in Hanja (if the name is composed of Hanja).

Hanja in place names

Due to standardization efforts during Goryeo and Joseon eras, native Korean placenames were converted to Hanja, and most names used today are Hanja-based. The most notable exception is the name of the capital, Seoul. Disyllabic names of railway lines, freeways, and provinces are often formed by taking one character from each of the two locales' names. For Seoul, the abbreviation is the Hanja gyeong (京). Thus,

The Gyeongbu (京釜) corridor connects Seoul (gyeong) with Busan (bu);
The Gyeongin (京仁) corridor connects Seoul with Incheon (in);
The former Jeolla (全羅) Province took its name from the first characters in the city names Jeonju (全州) and Naju (羅州) ("Naju" is originally "Raju" and the "n" sound in Korean is assimilated to "l" when it precedes an "l/r" sound).

Most atlases of Korea today are published in two versions: one in Hangul (sometimes with some English as well), and one in Hanja. Subway and railway station signs give the station's name in Hangul, Hanja, and English, both to assist visitors and to disambiguate the name. (A similar practice occurs in Japan, where signs are written in Hiragana, Kanji, and Romaji (Roman letters)).

Pronunciation

The pronunciation of Hanja in Korean is not identical to the way they are pronounced in Chinese, particularly Mandarin, although some Chinese dialects and Korean share similar pronunciations. For example, 印刷 "print" is yìnshuā in Mandarin Chinese and inswae (인쇄) in Korean, but it is pronounced insue in Shanghainese (a Wu Chinese dialect). Each Hanja character is pronounced as a single syllable, corresponding to a single composite character in Hangul.

Due to divergence in pronunciation since the time of borrowing, sometimes the pronunciation of a Hanja and its corresponding Hanzi may differ considerably. For example, 女 ("woman") is nǚ in Mandarin Chinese and nyeo (녀) in Korean. However, in most modern Korean dialects (especially South Korean ones), 女 is pronounced as yeo (여) when used in an initial position, due to a systematic displacement of initial n's followed by y or i.

References

Hannas, William. C. 1997. Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 082481892X (paperback); ISBN 0824818423 (hardcover)
DeFrancis, John. 1990. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0824810686

External links

Hanja (Chinese characters)

Hanja | Logographic writing systems | Korean language | Korean writing system

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