magnetonic

I picked up a book yesterday that is (hopefully) going to teach me how to read and write Chinese characters, which in the book in question, are actually called Korean characters, or 漢字(한자).

It's very cool because it shows you the character in a standard print typeface, such as 七, then tells you the meaning in Korean, in this example, 일곱, the meaning in English, seven, and the pronunciation in Korean, 칠. It also shows you how to write it and the radical (for those who know what a radical is).

This book contains 1800 characters, sometimes called the Basic Characters. These are the ones taught in middle and high schools in Korea.

I had alreadly picked up a few characters here and there, but I got this book so that I could at least make an attempt to learn some more. Something like 60% of Korean vocabulary is from Chinese, so this endeavour may be very useful.

Here are the first 10 characters that I'm studying: 一, 乙, 丁, 七, 乃, 九, 了, 二, 人, 入.

Just 1790 more to go.