Dive in Korean

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 /์ €, ๋Œ€/์†Œ) 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.

  1. 01

    ํ•™(ๅญธ): One Hanja Root, Ten Korean Words

    The character ๅญธ (hak, 'study, learn') hides inside ํ•™๊ต, ํ•™์ƒ, ํ•™์›, ์œ ํ•™, ์ž…ํ•™ and dozens more.

  2. 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€” ๊ต์‹ค,โ€ฆ

  3. 03

    ๊ตญ(ๅœ‹): One Hanja Root, Every Country Word

    The Chinese character ๅœ‹ (guk, 'country/nation') builds Korea's core geography vocabulary โ€” ํ•œ๊ตญ, ์™ธ๊ตญ, ์ „๊ตญ, ์• ๊ตญ.

  4. 04

    ์ „(้›ป): One Hanja Root, Ten Korean Words

    The character ้›ป (jeon, 'electricity') sits inside Korean words for phone, subway and charging โ€” ์ „ํ™”, ์ „๊ธฐ,โ€ฆ

  5. 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, ์ตœ๊ณ , ๊ณ ๊ธ‰ โ€” paired here with itsโ€ฆ

  6. 06

    ์ €(ไฝŽ): One Hanja Root, Ten Korean Words

    The character ไฝŽ (jeo, 'low') pairs with ๊ณ (้ซ˜) across dozens of Korean words: ์ €์˜จ, ์ €๊ฐ€, ์ €์†, ์ตœ์ €.

  7. 07

    ๋Œ€(ๅคง): One Hanja Root, Ten Korean Words

    The character ๅคง (dae, 'big/great') shows up in ๋Œ€๋ฐ•, ๋Œ€๋‹จํ•˜๋‹ค, ํ™•๋Œ€, ๋Œ€ํ•™๊ต and dozens more โ€” paired here with itsโ€ฆ

  8. 08

    ์†Œ(ๅฐ): One Hanja Root, Ten Korean Words

    The character ๅฐ (so, 'small') pairs with ๋Œ€(ๅคง) across dozens of Korean words: ์†Œํฌ, ์ถ•์†Œ, ์ตœ์†Œ, ์ค‘์†Œ๊ธฐ์—….

  9. 09

    ์ธ(ไบบ): One Hanja Root, Ten Korean Words

    The character ไบบ (in, 'person') is one of Korean's most common roots: ์™ธ๊ตญ์ธ, ํ•œ๊ตญ์ธ, ๊ฐœ์ธ, ์ธ๊ธฐ, ์ธ๊ฐ„.