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Is Hangul enough?

Posted: 2015-05-19, 1:40
by cjibhstcszjb
If I learn the Hangul silibaries and letters, is that enough to be able to read Korean? How common are the Chinese characters in Korean?

Re: Is Hangul enough?

Posted: 2015-05-19, 17:49
by Yasna
It's not enough. Chinese characters appear pretty regularly in newspapers, especially headlines. Here are a couple of examples from today's Chosun:

靑 정무수석·特補, 이렇게 '소모품'으로 써도 되는 자리인가
"한명숙 前총리 뇌물 판결 지연" 보수단체, 대법관 3명 檢 고발

That said, they are far less important in Korean than in the other two big East Asian languages. I think a few hundred characters will have you covered for 99% of situations.

Re: Is Hangul enough?

Posted: 2015-07-09, 12:27
by aforl
The thing is, if you know hangeul and not any hanja (chinese characters), you will be able to read 99% of everything in daily life. Newspapers regularly use hanja only to distinguish ambiguous homophones - if else, hanja is almost never used. Heck, many Koreans can't even read Hanja beyond a basic few.

Re: Is Hangul enough?

Posted: 2015-08-07, 9:28
by chongjasmine
I really love hangul. I think it is an interesting alphabets.

Re: Is Hangul enough?

Posted: 2016-05-13, 23:25
by cydevil
There are newspapers that don't use Hanja.

http://www.hani.co.kr

Yasna wrote:It's not enough. Chinese characters appear pretty regularly in newspapers, especially headlines. Here are a couple of examples from today's Chosun:

靑 정무수석·特補, 이렇게 '소모품'으로 써도 되는 자리인가
"한명숙 前총리 뇌물 판결 지연" 보수단체, 대법관 3명 檢 고발

That said, they are far less important in Korean than in the other two big East Asian languages. I think a few hundred characters will have you covered for 99% of situations.


I don't think that's the reason, at least not entirely. There's a lot of elite mentality among those who are highly proficient in Hanja, so they use Hanja in unnecessary situations simply to reinforce their elitism. For instance, the excerpt can be written completely in Hangul as follows.

청와대 정무수석·특별 보좌관, 이렇게 '소모품'으로 써도 되는 자리인가
"한명숙 전 총리 뇌물 판결 지연" 보수단체, 대법관 3명 검찰 고발

In many instances, Hanjas are used as abbreviations, which you cannot understand unless you know the actual word in Hangul or Hanja. Such cases can be found in the excerpt, 靑 and 檢. They alone don't mean anything, as they are abbreviations that stand for 청와대(靑瓦臺) and 검찰(檢察). The use of 前(전) is completely unnecessary, as anyone could understand it in Hangul.