Note on Hanja

1. Ancestors’ letter, Hanja

In the phonetic alphabet, each letter represents a unit of sound, and each letter has little meaning, and words made up of several letters have meaning. However, Hanja are ideographic characters, so each letter has a meaning, and a word made up of several letters may have a similar or different meaning from the original meaning of several letters combined. The sound pronounced in Hangul uses Hanja, which have been ideographs for a long time, as characters, and has a different system from English, which is phonetic characters. Therefore, when translating the original Hanja sentences, the writer would like to explain here in three ways. First, we will look at the meaning of each letter (Letter by Letter interpretation), Hangul sounds written in Korean and Hangul sounds written in English. Second, we will look at the meaning of a word made up of letters (Word by Word interpretation), Hangul sounds written in Korean and Hangul sounds written in English. Finally, we will look at full English and Korean translations of the original Hanja (Sentence by Sentence). From here on, Hanja are called as 'Hanja' or 'East Asian Characters'.

 

1-1. Hangul and Hanja do not have the concept of uppercase and lowercase letters like English.

If in English, only the first letter is capitalized when letters are combined, but if Hanja are combined to form a word, the beginning of each letter will always be all uppercase or lowercase, or each letter will be independently capitalized. For example, when Short and Hand are combined, it is written as Shorthand in English, but SHORTHAND or shorthand or ShortHand in Korean or Hanja. The name of the ancestor of the 18th generation is written as Seokyeon in English, but it becomes seokyeon, SEOKYEON, or SeokYeon in Korean or Hanja.

 

1-2. All Korean names are written with two letters apart.

The letters of Korean names may be written as ‘SEOK YEON’ or ‘Seok Yeon’. So, when a Korean name consisting of two letters is expressed in English, foreigners sometimes think of it as a name consisting of a first name and a middle name. Here, when expressing all Korean names in English, they are expressed as a single word by connecting two letters. For example, ‘Seokyeon’. For reference, if you check Korean passports, almost all Korean names are written with two letters apart (SEOK YEON). However, Korean names are not a separate word. The writer thinks it is needed a standard of English expression for Korean names. The reason for writing names in English with spaces can be explained as follows and can be assumed to be because Korean names are based on Hanja. This is because Hanja has meaning not only as words, but also as each letter that makes up a word. An English name is a single word made up of letters and has only one meaning, but a Korean name is made up of two meaningful letters combined to form a word. Korean names have the meaning of two letters, but since the name itself is a proper noun, it seems persuasive to express it as one word without spaces in English. For reference, when Hangul was first created, there was no space between words and words like Hanja. A foreign missionary, John Ross, visited Korea at the end of the 19th century, created the first Korean Bible (1882) and started writing by creating space between words in Hangul. The name of an ancestor in Korean or Hanja is a proper noun. However, there is no unique spelling because the ancestor's name has never been expressed in English until now. For example, even if Gyeongin is expressed in English as Gyeongin, Keongin, or Kyungin, it is the same name in Korean and Hanja. Here, it is informed that the English spelling of the ancestor's name was used arbitrarily by the writer.

 

1-3. Hanja is composed of Meaning and Sound.

This was the method used to write this character (East Asian Character) in a country where there was no character. For example, the letter of the ‘Person人(인)’ means that it is a person, and when it is read, it is called ‘In’. In the case of Korea, the meaning is expressed by the sound of Korean words (not characters), and the sound is similar to the pronunciation when borrowing this character (East Asian Character) at the time. And the meaning of "sound expresses the pronunciation of this character (East Asian Character) similarly at the time" is a story that Koreans still use the same pronunciation as the pronunciation at the time of borrowing East Asian characters at the time. The time when people on the Korean Peninsula borrowed Hanja was during the East Asian Han Dynasty. To exaggerate a bit, if today's Koreans can meet people from the Han Dynasty, then Koreans today can have conversations with people from the Han Dynasty. However, today's Chinese cannot communicate with Han people. Just as the shape of East Asian characters has changed, the pronunciation has also changed, and the meaning of words has also changed. Although the shapes of the characters are completely different, this is why the pronunciation of the Chinese characters spoken by Chinese today and the pronunciation of Hanja (Korean characters) by Koreans are different when reading characters with the same meaning. For example, For example, Koreans read pencil (鉛筆) as yeonpil (鉛筆), Japanese as enpitsu (鉛筆), and Chinese as qiānbǐ (铅笔). It is a letter with the same meaning and had the same shape in the Han Dynasty, but the pronunciation and shape of the three letters are different now. The ‘Korean language’ here refers to the language that has been used without letters in Korea since a long time ago. As mentioned above, “Hangul sounds written in Korean and Hangul sounds written in English” mentioned above means the pronunciation of reading Hanja. And "Letter by Letter and Word meaning" will explain the meaning of Hanja in English.

 

1-4. Hanja and People’s Republic of Chinese characters read the 'sound' of the letters, Japanese characters (East Asian characters) read 'sound' or 'meaning'.

For example, there is a Hanja for ‘Water물(meaning) 수(sound)水’. 'Water물' means meaning and ''su수' is sound. When reading this character, Hanja is read as 'su수' using sound. However, Japanese characters are read as 'su수' using sound or 'water물' using meaning. To be precise, Koreans in the past had their own pronunciation of words. Koreans expressed their own word pronunciation with similar sounding Hanja to express their unique word pronunciation in writing. This meaning is the same as saying that it was expressed in the meaning of the original word pronunciation. It is a rebus or phonetic loan characters (Read water as ‘water’). However, as the period of writing Hanja has become longer, it has been written to Hanja pronunciation instead of using the original word pronunciation. This meaning is the same as the word expressing by sound (Read water as ‘su’). From this period, many of the original words were changed to words using Hanja.

 

1-5. Tones and Pronunciation

In addition, there are four tones and different pronunciations for the same letters used in the past or present, the People's Republic of China language, simplified Chinese characters, and the meaning changes depending on the pronunciation and tone. Hanja used in South Korea have the same tone and same pronunciation. And in genealogy, ancestors used Hanja to express meaning only, and it has nothing to do with the sounds the ancestors spoke. In other words, the language of the People's Republic of China, Simplified Chinese characters, and Hanja of South Korea are completely different languages with which communication is impossible.

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2. Hanja as the Korean language

• In fact, East Asia is a large continent. It is a continent, just like Europe. Historically, there have been many countries in East Asia, but most of the countries in East Asia belonged to the Qing Dynasty when the Qing Dynasty, founded by Jurchen, was a modern country and when the borders were decided, and the Qing Dynasty's border was the country that is now the territory of the People's Republic of China were determined. In Europe, when countries were divided chronologically, the borders of modern countries were determined and many countries were created, while the People's Republic of China was in the opposite position. The People's Republic of China lives as a country like the United States, but people from other countries all live within the borders of the present People's Republic of China. The difference between the United States and the People's Republic of China is that in the United States, people from other countries migrate to the United States and live in the United States, and the People's Republic of China is merged like a federation with other countries forming a country called the Qing Dynasty. In other words, in the United States, most of the various ethnic groups live in all areas of the United States, but in the People's Republic of China, only specific ethnic groups live in a specific area. Therefore, the People's Republic of China has a policy of forcibly relocating Chinese Han Chinese to various regions. However, there is a limit to living in a certain area voluntarily and forced migration. Many countries are composed of many ethnic groups, but the People's Republic of China is in a state where it is too easy to separate into original countries once the coercion of the communist system is gone, so people in the People's Republic of China say that the People's Republic of China is fortunate that the Communist Party is the government and the country is not divided by coercive politics.

• If we were to compare the People's Republic of China and the Eurozone, it would be as follow. The similarities are as follows. As for history, both regions have a long history. As for the language, the Eurozone has different languages, but there are many similar languages, so it is easy to use the language. The People's Republic of China officially has the same language, but there are many cases where there are inconveniences in language communication in each region. Both regions are made up of different ethnic groups. Both regions use the same currency, and both regions are easy to move to. Although the eurozone is a different country, movement within the eurozone is free. As for the gap between the rich and the poor, the Eurozone is divided into rich countries and poor countries. The People's Republic of China is poor except in the East. The difference is as follows. As for country names, the Eurozone has different country names, but the People's Republic of China has one country name. In other words, the People's Republic of China is shaped like the eurozone.

• In terms of language, most countries use the alphabet in Europe, but it has become a language in other countries with different pronunciations. In East Asia, 'the ancient characters used in Han Dynasty' are used in East Asia, and the People's Republic of China said the 'ancient characters used in Han Dynasty' are called the People's Republic of China characters, but they play the same role as the European alphabet, and in East Asia, as many countries used the characters, the pronunciation was different. Of course, there are many cases where there are slight variations. These types of characters will not be called the People's Republic of China characters here but will be referred to as 'East Asian Characters'. The East Asian Characters used by the Qing Dynasty and the Jurchen is called Manchu characters. The East Asian Characters used in Japan is Japanese characters. The characters used by Tibetans, East Asian characters, is in the Tibetan language characters. Only the Simplified Chinese characters currently used in mainland China (the People's Republic of China) are the language characters of the People's Republic of China, or Mandarin Chinese. The East Asian characters used in the Republic of China (Taiwan) is the Republic of China (Taiwan) languages characters. 'The ancient characters used in Han Dynasty (Korean called Hanja)' used in South Korea is ancient Korean language characters and is still in use. The Korean language, which has been used as a spoken language for communication since ancient times, is read and recorded using Hanja. Therefore, Hanja was used as Korean characters until Hangul characters were invented, and now they are used together with Hangul.

• As an aside, if you think about Hanja again, you can take the following example. The ancestors of present-day Koreans had their own language of pronunciation and borrowed Hanja to write the language. Let's assume that Koreans immigrated to the United States in 1970 and have not been to Korea until now. The Korean who immigrated only knows about life in Korea in 1970 and continues to be a Korean in 1970. Of course, his American life has changed from 1970 to the present. Koreans who used Hanja use ancient Han characters or Hanja. However, for the people living in the area, everything changes as time passes, and the Han characters or Hanja used in ancient times have changed to Simplified Characters. Even if the same people who used the same language do not come and go for a long time, they have the same roots but become different languages, so the ancient Han character or Hanja and the current Simplified Characters are different characters.

• Hanja is a logotype character and refers to the individual words or character systems of a language as individual characters. Originating in East Asia, it is used in East Asian and Southeast Asian countries such as the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaysia. This character plays the same role as the Western alphabet. In modern Korean, Hangul is mainly used, but about 57% of Korean words are Hanja. The Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea designates 1,800 frequently used Hanja to be taught in middle and high schools, and about 90% of Hanja used in Korea are composed of these Hanja. It is like the case where Hangul character was used in other countries to express the spoken language of that country. In that country, Hangul’s characters are used as their characters to express their language, not the Korean language we use. 

• In 2023, Koreans think only Hangul is Korean, but people who have lived in the Korean Peninsula for a long-time use Hanja and the pronunciation is the ancestor of the current pronunciation. After the invention of Hangul, both Hanja and Hangul were used together on the Korean Peninsula, but even though Hangul is a phonetic character, as if Hanja were meaning characters, Hangul words with meanings have been used, and even now many words have similar meanings to Hanja. This is the part where many young people or foreigners feel the difficulty of Hangul. Of course, now many Korean words have been changed into sound letters by unraveling their meanings, but it seems that Hangul is still not a perfect phonetic alphabet like English. For example, Hangul characters as schools (hakkyo학교學校), restaurants (sikdang식당食堂), lunches (jeomsim점심點心), books (doseo도서圖書), pencils (yeonpil연필鉛筆), working place (jikjang직장職場) and parents (bumo부모父母) based on Hanja. As of 2023, Koreans do not use Hanja well, nevertheless, all Hangul words are the language characters under the foundation of Hanja, not sound letters. It is difficult to understand the pros and cons of Hangul and exclude Hanja from Korean characters. We should not forget the recognition that Hangul and Hanja are Korean languages characters and keep them within the same frame as a language tool that conveys our hearts. In addition, all tables of contents here are written in Korean and Hanja together, and you can read them with the same pronunciation, so please try it.