불신심 – impiety 불신감 – a distrust 불신실 – insincerity 불신을 품다 – to be distrustful of 불신을 사다 – to lose one’s credit 불신을 일으키다 – to cause distrust 불신심한 – impious 불신하다 – to distrust 불신심자 – an impious person 불신감을 품다 – to be distrustful of 불신감을 일으키다 – to make distrustful 불신실하다 – to be insincere ~의 불신을 초래하다 – to incur the mistrust of… ~을 불신의 눈으로 보다 – to look upon with distrust ~을 불신하다 – to not give credence to 깊은 불신 – deep distrust 상호 불신 – mutual distrust 만연한 불신 – widespread distrust 깊이 자리잡은 불신 – deep-seated distrust 정치에 대한 국민의 불신 – the nation’s distrust in politics
*Sample Sentences*
언론을 불신하는 사람이 점점 늘어나고 있다. More and more people distrust the press.
우리 사회에 불신 풍조가 만연해 있다. In our society, people find it increasingly difficult to trust each other.
양국 사이의 불신이 심각해지고 있다. Mistrust between the two countries is getting intense.
사법제도에 대한 불신은 사회 불안을 초래할 수도 있다. Mistrust towards the criminal justice system can lead to civil unrest.
그들은 정부에 깊은 불신을 가지고 있다. They have a deep distrust of the government.
그들 사이에는 의심과 불신이 자리잡고 있다. There is suspicion and mistrust among them.
정치인에 대한 국민들의 불신이 높은 것으로 드러났다. It is reported that a high percentage of people find it difficult to trust their politicians.
그들은 당국에 대해 깊은 불신을 갖고 있었다. They had a deep distrust of authority.
이번 경험으로 그는 은행을 불신하게 됐다. His experience left him with a mistrust of banks.
그 녀석은 나를 싫어한다. 적어도 불신하는 건 확실하다. He hates me. Or at least distrusts me.
Welcome to the first post of my new “漢字(한자) 배우자!” I love Hanja, but a lot of Korean-learning resources don’t really cover it unless it’s a resources specifically targeted toward people who want to learn Hanja. In this first post, I’ll start by briefly introducing what Hanja is and why it matters to Korean, and then I’ll introduce a few characters.
What is Hanja?
Hanja (漢字) is the Korean word for Chinese characters. About 70% of Korean vocabulary is based on Chinese characters, so being familiar with Hanja could potentially make it easier for you to learn and remember new words. I personally find Hanja especially useful in cases where the meanings of two words are very similar. If I know what their component Hanja are, I can work out the little nuances in the word meanings using the individual meanings of the Hanja.
While Hanja is no longer extensively used in Korean writing—it used to be the main writing form until Hangul was created, and even then it was used mixed in with Hangul for a long time—that doesn’t mean it has entirely disappeared. Names are one place where you can see Hanja. While some Koreans have native Korean names that are not based on Hanja, most have names that are based on the Chinese characters, which you can see on their identification cards. You might also see a few Hanja in newspapers or on the news, particularly to denote specific countries, and sometimes words in books will have the Hanja written beside the hangul if the word has a homophone with a more common meaning, or if the word being used isn’t a very common one. Just walking around the city, you can see Hanja over doors and gates in old historical palaces, on restaurant and building signs… There are a lot of places you might see Hanja!
Hanja are divided into levels, and there is even a test that one can take to determine their level of proficiency in Hanja. The most basic characters are 8급 (level 8) and the most difficult are 1급. There are also 특급 (special level) characters that are very rarely (or perhaps not at all) used in Korean. I’ve found that some common Kanji in Japanese and some common characters in Mandarin fall under 특급 or the higher levels in Korean Hanja’s ranking system!
Why learn Hanja?
A lot of the time when I tell Korean acquaintances that I study Hanja, I’m met with the question, “Why?” Many of them seem puzzled why I would even bother when Hanja isn’t commonly used in writing anymore, when the characters are so difficult to read/write/remember, when they say they’ve forgotten pretty much all the Hanja that they’ve ever learned and have no use for it… and I won’t pretend that Hanja is the most useful thing, because it isn’t, not anymore. However, I have a few reasons why I learn Hanja (and why I think others should too!)
I already mentioned one of the benefits I get from Hanja above, and that benefit is being able to work out word meanings easily. If I know the characters a word is made of, I can understand the nuances of meaning between words with similar meanings. This way of working out word meanings using Hanja also helps me understand words that I’m just encountering for the first time. If I hear or see a word that I don’t know, I can often infer which characters the word is comprised of and thus, can guess fairly accurately what the word means. Or, perhaps I see a new word and its Hanja written together, I can look at the characters and, if I know them, piece together what the word probably means. Of course, being able to do this requires having a decent mental storage of characters to choose from, but once you get there, the benefit is real!
The other reasons why I learn Hanja are less academic but no less valid! I personally find the characters beautiful to look at and fun to write, sort of like drawing, so that’s a plus for me, and knowing Hanja gives you something cool (depends on your definition of cool, I suppose!) to talk about when you meet new Korean friends! Getting into Hanja can be daunting at first if you’ve never dealt with Chinese characters before, but I hope you all at least give it a try to see if it works for you 🙂
Let’s learn Hanja
Now that you know what Hanja is and how learning it could help your Korean studies, let’s learn a few characters. I think it makes sense for us to start with the two characters in the word “漢字 한자.”
The first character we see is 한수/한나라 漢 (한) (읽기7급II). 한수 refers to the Han River, which cuts through the middle of Seoul; and 한나라 refers to the Han country, or the Chinese Han Dynasty, people of Han descent, and China. Since we know 漢字 is the word for “Chinese characters,” we know that in this case, the meaning of 漢 is 한나라 한 and not 한수 한.
The second character here is 글자 자 (읽기7급), which is a character that refers to writing. Combined with 한나라 漢 (한), we get the meaning of “Chinese writing” or “Chinese characters.
Let’s look at a few more words that use these characters:
漢:
漢江 한강 (한수 한, 강 강)– The Han River
漢水 한수 (한수 한, 물[water] 수)– Another (less common) way to refer to the Han River
字:
數字 숫자 (셀[count] 수, 글자 자)– number
文字 문자 (글월[writing, sentence] 문, 글자 자)– script, writing
EX: 무자 메시지 (text message)
Let’s write Hanja
Writing 漢字 is another fun part of learning the characters! While you don’t really need to know how to write them, I find it pretty fun, and they look cool too!
Each character follows a specific stroke order which usually goes from top to bottom, left to right. Try to follow along and write today’s characters!
What do you have in mind? Today’s @WotD is 염두. The 한자 for this word is, 생각할 (to think,thought) 념 念 + 머리 (head) 두 頭.
It has two meanings: (1) 생각의 시초 – The very first moment, an inception of thought (2) 마음 속 – Inner mind, inside your head, etc.
This word is often used in the expression, “염두에 두다” and “염두에 없다.” 염두에 두다 takes the verb 두다 (to place) and used ‘에,’ the preposition “at” (Some of you may know it as the “location marker”). 염두에 두다 would mean, ‘keep in mind’ or ‘consider.’ 염두에 없다, on the other hand, would roughly mean, ‘it doesn’t cross someone’s mind.’
While this feels like an advanced term, it’s sprinkled in Korean literature and conversations surprisingly often. I’d advise you to look up some examples today, on your own ;), and try to imitate what you find.
Here are some prompts to utilize after your research:
What have you kept in mind and why?
What has happened, that you didn’t think would happen?
Is there a saying that you hold dearly?
FYI: Koreans misuse this word as 염두하다. 염두+하다 is an incorrect usage of 염두; so stay away from saying “염두 해 두다” 🙂
무난하다 = easy, without difficulty (難 어려울 난)
철 (계절)
장마철 = monsoon season 김장철 = kimchi making season 휴가철 = holiday season 관광철 = tourist season 복숭아철 = peach season
포도철 = grape season
철에 따라 피는 꽃 = seasonal flowers
경치는 철에 따라 바뀐다 = the scenery changes from season to season
Just memorize the meanings. I don’t think you need to learn them all. Sorry if this is not helpful at all. I don’t personally learn them.
Mind if I throw in my own two cents? You certainly don’t need to know Hanja to be successful at Korean—in fact, I wouldn’t recommend touching it until you’re already at a pretty comfortable level so you don’t feel bogged down or confused. However, I personally find it fun and useful, and here’s why:
Think of Hanja as being like prefixes and suffixes and such in English. If you know what the prefix “un-” means, you can understand a lot of words that start with “un-” and you can generalize it to form new words. Of course, you could just learn the whole word “unhappy” on its own, but it’s far more useful to understand that it is “un + happy.” Hanja is similar in that they are the building blocks and components of a lot of words. Just through studying Korean you will gain a sort of passive understanding of Hanja—just like how English has “un-,” Korean has the negative prefix “부/불,” and so on—so really studying it in its own right isn’t really necessary. However, especially when you get to more advanced vocabulary, it can be great to know! Especially when you consider that sometimes there are words in Korean that can be translated similarly into English (for example, 결심하다 and 결정하다), being able to sort of feel the difference and nuance between the two based on their different components is a good skill to have.
Again, whether or not you want to study Hanja is up to, well, you! I enjoy writing them and learning their meanings and being able to understand the words more deeply (and sometimes I get to make connections between Korean and Chinese, which I find helpful for my studies!) but you definitely don’t need to sit down and learn to write all the characters and read them and know their exact meanings. I did it because I found it fun, but… wow, I’m rambling. Yeah, my point is, you don’t need to be familiar with the Hanja themselves, but being able to recognize and parse words by their components has been, to me, useful and enjoyable.
If anyone is interested, I can throw together a quick post on how I studied Hanja before 🙂
Sutdy-Korean 