Customer Reviews

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

Given a choice between this book by Bruce K. Grant and other (sparsely) available works on this subject, I would unhesitatingly stick with this one. Even after entering its third decade in print it is still the definitive hanja reference guide. The 1,800 characters are presented in stroke order, although a phonetic listing can also be referred to. A stroke- order chart along with corresponding Hangul phonetic equivalent and English translation is presented with each character. I feel there are a few minor shortcomings - DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK IF YOU ARE PRIMARILY INTERESTED IN LEARNING THE KOREAN PHONETIC WRITING SYSTEM (HANGUL). I think that the inclusion of Hangul in this book was a waste of time, as any basic textbook and even some phrase books I've come across do a better job of presenting Hangul to a beginner. Remember, 99% of the text is HANJA reference. I also feel that some of the example vocabulary (listed beside each character to show how it can be combined with other characters to form [mostly] bisyllabic words) is useless in terms of practical usage. In spite of these minor flaws it is a fantastic book. I initially attempted to memorize all 1,800 characters in stroke order, but got distracted at the half-way point. It believe there are better books out there to learn Hanja as it is used with written Korean (for example, A First Reader in Korean Writing in Mixed Script by Fred Lukoff, and MANY excellent materials produced by the Defense Language Institute Korean Language Department). As stated earlier, this book is best used as a REFERENCE source. In the many years I have used this for reference I can only recall one character that was not listed. The 1,800 characters listed are those that are taught to Korean students throughout middle school and high school. Hats off to Bruce K. Grant for this most helpful book.

THIS IS NOT A BOOK TO LEARN HOW TO SPEAK KOREAN!!! It is specifically to learn the sino-korean characters, otherwise known as han-mun. It helps if you already have some kind of working knowledge of Korean, and if you actually know what you want to learn. This book is super for learning things like the days of the week, addresses, and names. This book is really a (beginner's) vocabulary booster and to help you impress your friends. The indices are super, as is the whole book: very well organized and easy to use. I've seen sino-japanese (kanji) books that cannot compare as far as clarity and ease of use. There's even a chart in the back with all of the family names used (and many no longer used) in Korea.

The way the book works is 1)know the sound of the character you're looking for; or 1a)know what it looks like; 2)look in one of the indices; 3)the character you are or may be looking for will have a number assigned to it; 4)look up the number and -boom- there's your character, complete with a stroke order diagram and related words defined in English while written in korean and han-mun. Simple.

I should probably give it five stars--because I can find no real flaws. However, I think that a person with better Korean skills than I have could find problems. So, for people who are beginners at Korean--five stars. People for whom Korean is old hat--three stars. Therefore: four.

Excellent reference for an ongoing student of the Korean language. The ease of use and extensive practical information make this a must for anyone studying Korean. I also have Pictoral Sino-Korean Characters by Jacob Chang-Kim. Together, my hanja reference collection is 100% complete!

I purchased the above book about six years ago during my pursuit and interest into Asian Languages. Personally, I thought that it helped in presenting the written fonts of hangul and hancha in very basic steps. It aided in my development of being able to grasp and associate various characters with ease. Compared to other self study books used I would have to definitely give this book a 4.5 star rating for the development in grammatical context. For the speaking ease I would have to give a 3.5, yet with consistent pronounciation drills and the marvels of todays internet being able to pronounce the characters being presented will make more sense now than ever before.

Good Hanja book. Exactly what I expected. This book is not really intended for learning Hangeul. This is for those who are already familiar with Korean and who want to learn Sino-Korean (Chinese) characters.

This is like a hanja dictionary. If you want to learn hangul, don't buy this.
Note: Hanja is like chinese characters, But the koreans borrow them. Also called Sino-Korean Charachters

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.

I want to give this three and a half stars. There are lots of other 4 and 5 star reviews, so I figure I'd round down to give a contrasting oppinion.

I am a student of Japanese. I recently decided to try my hand at Korean as well. I am very fascinated by the fact that the great majority of Kanji compounds in Japanese have direct Korean analogs, even if Hanja aren't used in official Korean writings any more.

I purchased this book with the impression it was the Korean equivalent of a favorite book of mine, Japanese Kanji & Kana Revised Edition: A Guide to the Japanese Writing System (Tuttle Language Library). Indeed, the entries are more or less done the same style.

While the book will meet my need of owning a Korean reference dictionary for looking up the Korean pronunciations for various Hanja, it fell short in a few regards.

First, and most importantly, the ordering of the entries is by stroke order. Perhaps this is standard among Korean and Chinese references, but especially for learners, this order is mostly useless. I would much have preferred that they used frequency ranking or grade-level instead.

Second, the introductory section is extremely terse. It reads very much like the one found in Kanji and Kana, but they ran out of ink or something! I really wanted to better understand the difference between the hun and eum readings of a hanja and to see how these concepts compared to the on and kun readings found in Japanese. There is also no section on different fonts or punctuation marks used in modern Korean. (As a beginning Japanese learner, I found this section in Kanji and Kana to be extremely interesting and insightful!)

Lastly -- and this is a minor thing, but one I will probably find constantly frustrating me -- is the final page, which has a lovely chart of hangeul, is glued funny! It makes it a little difficult to flip to the final pages of the book, where all the indexes are. (And anyone who's ever used a Chinese character dictionary knows most of their time is spent searching through the indexes!)

All-in-all, I think I will be happy with this purchase. The book is a good size and is visually very appealing. Each hanja entry is clear, with both the large print character and a hand-written font showing the general stroke order (which can differ from the Japanese stroke order!) Each has two or three compound words exhibiting how the hanja is used. (Annoyingly, the other hanja in the compounds are not cross referenced). In the back, there are two pages which have "commonly confused characters" and "common abbreviations". The ENTIRE book is in Hanja and Hangeul and there is no romanization at all, which I personally love, and it gives the book a very authentic feel.

So tl;dr, A Guide to the Korean Characters is a terse, simple Hanja dictionary. I would not recommend it for students who have no exposure to Hanja, but for those with experience in Japanese or Chinese or who know some Korean and want to learn the Chinese characters for the words they already know, it is a cute, adequate dictionary.

Review per request from Nancy @ foodforyourbrain. Thank you for the prompt delivery. Please accept the following critique in a more prosaic form as follows:

If this book was merely my bicycle,
The text needs a pnuematic tentacle.

The pure air of Pinyin not found in my tires,
Manda-rims rest on such spoke-n-wires.

A revolution inflated by a tonemark!
Reverse then overdrive or ride & park?

On tirelessly pedal,
Rubber tires against hot metal.

At the crossroads of Rave & Rant;
psi to Dr. Bruce K. Grant

To brake or break?
Another edition is all it would take.