A Guide To Korean Characters: Reading and Writing Hangul and Hanja (A Mini Dictionary of Characters for Modern Readers)

This is the only way to learn REAL Korean beyond the small talk stage. Korea was an oral civilization without letters until it got introduced to Chinese literary culture and civilization, which it had fully adopted by about 295 A.D. The only writing system used until the 15th Century was the Chinese one. The same goes for all books and signs, contracts et cetera. Thus, over the years, the Chinese of the schoolroom and of books and learning flowed naturally into the spoken language, and today the vast majority of Korean is actually of Chinese derivation. As a non-Korean who learned the language and am still working on mastering it, I can attest to the fact that the only way forward with the language is to learn its root words, which are handily all clustered around these characters, which are laid out for us here in this book in a handy, systematic way, from easier to draw to harder to draw. You must learn every character, its native Korean meaning, its Sino-Korean pronunciation, and its English translation. This book has the 1800 characters that the Korean government has deemed necessary for the public to know to be able to handle the full scope of the language. Yes, there are other characters in use, but the 1800 government approved ones account for virtually all the ones you need to handle Korean vocabulary. You don't just learn the Sino-Korean pronunciation but the native Korean meaning too, which means that you will be ready for both formal and informal conversation, the native Korean words being used more for informal speech and the Sino-Korean root words for more formal speech and writing. You might look at this task in from of you and think - how am I to memorize 1800 characters, 1800 Korean words and 1800 sino-Korean pronunciations??? Well, I'll tell you that it is MUCH easier than having to memorize the dictionary with 300,000 separate words!!! Also, the characters each have their own little story to tell, and this story affects the precise meaning of the root word. The old example usually given is that of the character for "east" which combines the image for a tree with that of the sun, thus this character has always brought to the reader's mind the image of a sun rising behind a tree. The character of "comfort" shows a woman in a house. The character chosen for "dollars" is one that happens to look like a mirror image of the $ sign. As it is pronounced "bul" that is why the Korean word for American dollars is "bul". Interesting, eh? There is a whole narrative and artistic aspect to the Korean, Japanese, and Chinese languages due to their use of the characters that makes what they call "language" more than what we call language. Language for them, due to the characters is also storytelling and visual art. The characters actually ADD meaning to the words and are integral to understanding the Civilization of the East. Learn them or give up, I say! You can see how primitive life was in Korea when the characters first came as there is no native word even for a "table". Anyhow, it's through the characters that you really get to the heart of Korean and East Asian culture and mindset. Without them you're taking a shortcut that prevents your accessing the authentic language and culture. Some people think this book does not also teach Hangeul nor Native Korean. This is patently false. Every character is accompanied by hangeul native Korean definitions and hangeul pronunciations, and also all the example words are included WITH their hangeul spellings. This book is in fact a practical compendium of the Korean language. Frankly speaking, if you are a bit of a linguist, just this book and a grammar book are all you really need to learn the language. This one has all the words you need, and the grammar book all the grammar you need. That's enough! After that it's practical application, using a dictionary or context to make sense of more things that pop up. How I use it is I write out each (1) character, (2) native Korean meaning, (3) Sino-Korean pronunciation and (4) the example words in hanja and hangeul in my notebook, going through each page 10 times before going onto the next one. I go through the whole book and then start over (just to review/stay sharp). It's fool proof. I can't but learn with this method! It takes about 30 minutes to fully memorize the entire page this way and you don't ever forget it. The additional characters learnt through the example words speed up the learning process greatly. With this method you learn between around 15-25 hanja characters and their pronunciations per page. Thus, by page 10 (so let's say after about 10 days of studying) you have around 200 characters memorized that you will never forget, and remember you only really need 1800 to be fully fluent! Of course more common characters come up more often, so you do indeed have to work through the whole book. If you do only one page a day, it will take you around 10 months to master the contents of this book. If you do more pages a day you speed it up. There is no replacement for thorough memorization of root words in language study. There are other ways to memorize of course besides writing things out, using flash cards etc, but I like this writing out the page ten times method because it is simple, fun (in my opinion) and is good writing practice to boot! The characters are beautiful art and take us back to a more aboriginal time in East Asia when people lived closer to nature. Learning the characters is like meeting God. They are beautiful and naturalistic, and they make me think deeply about the meaning for words and concepts. They add depth to my thought about English vocabulary too, and about life itself. They are super fun, deeply meaningful, and definitely the only way forward with the language. BUY IT and USE IT! I strongly recommend following this book with Kun Ho Park's "Learning Korean Hanja" (not offered in English, only in Korean, sorry!) which teaches the same material but according to the method Grant said he would use in his next book promised in his intro but never (apparently) got around to doing or at least to the publishing stage. Grant planned to make a second book organizing the characters by root character and thus in families of characters. Kun Ho Park's book does this with the logic behind the combinations explained from a clear anthropological, narrative stand point. Both books complement each other beautifully - Grant's is organized by complexity of the characters, Park's by root characters. Grant's is fully sufficient though if you are content with the 1800 basic characters and don't feel you need to master all the rest.

Several of the other reviews seemed to emphasize that this should be used as a reference book rather than as a means of learning hanja. However, I am so far finding it very useful for learning hanja. I like that it shows the stroke order for every character instead of just listing the rules at the beginning. I like that it has both the official Korean definition and an English definition, and I like that the pronunciation is in hangul rather than romanized (I should note that, while I don't know many Korean words, I can read hangul). I bought boxed writing paper to practice writing the characters, and I have made flashcards to learn the pronunciations and English definitions. I have so far learned the first seven characters in the book, over the course of three days. (I would be moving more quickly if I did not have school). I hope to learn all 1800 over the next two years.

This book has been recommended to me several times and I finally bought it. Absolutely loved this buying experience. We got this book for a great price and it arrived fast.

Having informally studied first the Japanese and then the Chinese languages, I found this Mini Dictionary very helpful for starting my new informal study of the Korean Language. It is helpful to the student in relating many new Korean words to those words already experienced in sound and/or form found in Chinese and Japanese. Beyond rote memorizing of Korean words in a vocabulary, this dictionary provides a visualization to the student's past knowledge through the commonality of Chinese characters.

One of the only concise Hanja dictionaries on the market for english speakers. Contains all of the essential ones taught in schools. The Amazon information is incorrect, but in a good way. First, it's the third edition which is the most recent, not the second as advertised. Also, the size is more around 7-8 inches long and not 9-10. Lastly, the third edition has a printed hardcover like the books we call 'turtlebacks' and not a dustjacket as did earlier editions of this book.

This book gives what it promises. It delivers you with a list of 1800 Chinese characters used in Korea. Each entry comes with examples. The pronunciations are only given in Hangul, which is a good thing in my opinion. Although this book does contain a reference to Hangul, you shouldn't even be near this book if you don't already know it. The book also lists the meaning of the word before it's pronunciation. I think that is quite a refreshing approach to what I'm used to. What I find less appealing about this book is the way in which the characters are organized. The book calls itself a guide, but it also tries to be a character dictionary. This wouldn't be too much of a problem if it were by radical, but this book lists all the Hanja by amount of strokes. I think this makes it rather cumbersome to study from this book. I also think it would have been much better if the Hanja were listed by frequency instead. To give you an example: You will find the character for 'Divination' on p29 and the character for 'medicine' on p316. Which are you more likely to use? I could probably look for a more absurd example. The book should work fine for look up/reference purposes however. And it's the only of it's kind (in covering all the main characters) as far as I know, so you don't have much choice anyway when it comes to actual printed books. Pro's: + It delivers what it promises + Example words + Hardcover + Elegant size (13x19 cm) Con's: - Lists characters by amount of strokes instead of usefulness

Good dictionary with 1800 characters; strokes order, phonetic index and so on. It's a pity it's not arrived in the time guaranteed.

This book is worth purchasing bez the book has really nice explanation of every basic 'Hanja' needed to know without making it over complicated!! I will highly recommend it to all my fellow students who are learning korean and vocabulary!!

Very good

If you are interested in learning hanja, then this is a great book. Pros: It is compact in size. It has 1800 hanja that are taught in schools. It has a radical index and a phonetic index. Drawings are clear. Cons: The sample words given for each character are often a bit abstract. The Choo/O'Grady book makes a good companion in this respect. On the whole I would strongly recommend this to Korean learners of intermediate level and above. The sooner you start learning some hanja the better. Once you get started it is surprisingly easy to pick the up and it makes understanding and remembering vocab a lot easier if you have some context from the meaning.

Excellent little book for me. As I already knew many of the Chinese characters it has helped me learn the Korean pronunciation. But if I was a beginner I think it could be quite confusing. All in all a great little book.