Topic guide
Korean Hanja Roots: One Character, Ten Words
Korean absorbed thousands of Chinese-origin roots the way English absorbed Latin and Greek โ learn the root once, and a whole family of words stops being random syllables.
Each page here takes one hanja root and shows the everyday Korean words built from it.
These work best in pairs and small clusters (๊ณ /์ , ๋/์) rather than one at a time โ learning opposites together is what makes the pattern click, so open two or three related roots in one sitting.
- 01
ํ(ๅญธ): One Hanja Root, Ten Korean Words
The character ๅญธ (hak, 'study, learn') hides inside ํ๊ต, ํ์, ํ์, ์ ํ, ์ ํ and dozens more.
- 02
์ค(ๅฎค): One Hanja Root, Every Kind of Room
The Chinese character ๅฎค (sil, 'room') builds dozens of everyday Korean words for rooms and spaces โ ๊ต์ค,โฆ
- 03
๊ตญ(ๅ): One Hanja Root, Every Country Word
The Chinese character ๅ (guk, 'country/nation') builds Korea's core geography vocabulary โ ํ๊ตญ, ์ธ๊ตญ, ์ ๊ตญ, ์ ๊ตญ.
- 04
์ (้ป): One Hanja Root, Ten Korean Words
The character ้ป (jeon, 'electricity') sits inside Korean words for phone, subway and charging โ ์ ํ, ์ ๊ธฐ,โฆ
- 05
๊ณ (้ซ): One Hanja Root, Ten Korean Words
The character ้ซ (go, 'high/tall') hides in dozens of Korean words โ ๊ณ ์, ๊ณ ์จ, ์ต๊ณ , ๊ณ ๊ธ โ paired here with itsโฆ
- 06
์ (ไฝ): One Hanja Root, Ten Korean Words
The character ไฝ (jeo, 'low') pairs with ๊ณ (้ซ) across dozens of Korean words: ์ ์จ, ์ ๊ฐ, ์ ์, ์ต์ .
- 07
๋(ๅคง): One Hanja Root, Ten Korean Words
The character ๅคง (dae, 'big/great') shows up in ๋๋ฐ, ๋๋จํ๋ค, ํ๋, ๋ํ๊ต and dozens more โ paired here with itsโฆ
- 08
์(ๅฐ): One Hanja Root, Ten Korean Words
The character ๅฐ (so, 'small') pairs with ๋(ๅคง) across dozens of Korean words: ์ํฌ, ์ถ์, ์ต์, ์ค์๊ธฐ์ .
- 09
์ธ(ไบบ): One Hanja Root, Ten Korean Words
The character ไบบ (in, 'person') is one of Korean's most common roots: ์ธ๊ตญ์ธ, ํ๊ตญ์ธ, ๊ฐ์ธ, ์ธ๊ธฐ, ์ธ๊ฐ.
Want these to stick?
Quiz yourself in today's study session โ