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Hanja and (traditional) Hanzi | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4869 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 1 of 8 19 August 2012 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I'm thinking about starting Hanja study both to advance in Korean and to build a foundation for studying Mandarin. I read that Hanja and traditional Hanzi are basically the same (with some difference in stroke order?).
What I would like to know is how much the single characters differ in importance in each language. Are there characters which are very common/basic in one language and not very important or even obsolete in the other? Say I were to learn the Hanja for level 8 to 5 of the Hanja test - would that be a considerable help in beginning Mandarin (level A1) or not? If they are not much help for level A1, would they be more useful in level A2 or would I only see a real benefit if I started Mandarin with a high level of Hanja knowledge? Edited by druckfehler on 19 August 2012 at 5:43pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5536 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 2 of 8 19 August 2012 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Korean tends to follow the Chinese stroke order as well. It's Japanese that tends to differ from other two on stroke order. It sounds like you are looking to do something similar to what I am doing with Hanja as a head start on Japanese Kanji.
If I were to go about it again, I'm not 100% sure I would delve into Hanja at all but would consider instead just going straight to learning them as Japanese Kanji. However, that is primarily due to the fact that the Korean readings are what tend to pop into my head immediately when I see a Chinese character and I worry that will continue to happen when I start linking them into Japanese. That said, Korean pronunciation seems to be a lot closer to the Chinese pronunciation than it is to Japanese (partly because Japanese has to stretch out many of the "Chinese readings" to 2 syllables due to their inability to end words with any consonant that isn't "n" and partly due to Japanese applying Chinese characters to both native Japanese words and to Chinese-derived words), so this may be less of an issue with Mandarin. However, I think it also depends on *when* you plan to learn Mandarin. If soon, then I'd personally suggest learning them with Mandarin readings from the start, since you will use them far more in Mandarin than you will in Korean. If you don't plan to start Mandarin for a few years, then it would not really hurt to get a head start by learning some of the more common ones as Hanja for now, then learn the Mandarin readings when the time comes. Also, you've probably already picked up several Hanja simply from watching Korean TV, since some characters are frequently used in on-screen text on Korean TV (男, 女, 子, 人, 忍, 美, 力, 大, 王, etc.). BTW, the link you listed there will be quite useful to me. Thanks. :) EDIT: Upon rereading my reply it seems as if I'm trying to discourage you from learning Chinese characters as Hanja, but I assure you I'm not. Learning Hanja will be beneficial to both Korean and to whatever other Chinese character based languages you learn in the future. I've already found this to be true with Japanese despite any notable differences in readings between the two languages. Unless you are planning to start the other language in the *very* near future, I would have no hesitation about learning at least the more common ones as Hanja first. Edited by Warp3 on 19 August 2012 at 7:23pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 3 of 8 19 August 2012 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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After a quick look on the Wiki page you linked to, I can assure you they're all or nearly all very commonly used
characters in Mandarin, though of course if you want to study PRC Mando you'd have to relearn many of them as simplified. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4869 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 4 of 8 19 August 2012 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Thanks a lot for your replies!
That's good to know. I guess I got the stroke order thing from your log and mixed it up.
I was always wondering how a single Japanese Kanji could have two syllables - interesting! I've been watching some TV from Taiwan and Mainland China, so I noticed that the pronunciation is indeed extremely similar in some cases and still recognizably related in others. I then studied a couple of audio/pinyin sentences and whenever I noticed a connection to Korean it got much easier to remember vocabulary. That's how I got the idea to study Hanja first - I think they will help me to map Korean syllables onto Mandarin ones where I might otherwise miss the connection. Thanks to the tones and lots of different vowel and consonant sounds I find that Mandarin and Korean sound very distinct from each other, so hopefully mix-ups will be minimal. Right now I'm thinking of starting Mandarin in 8-10 months, but it depends on how happy I'll be with my Korean skills by that time and whether I take advantage of an offer to learn Persian. In any case, it's probably a sufficient amount of time to get a bit of a head-start.
I'd like to eventually learn both systems (totally getting ahead of myself here), but at the moment I think traditional characters look more appealing. I often read that starting with traditional is a good tactic for people who want to learn both - but then there are so many diverging opinions, I don't know if there's a real advantage either way. I guess the only certain advantage is that I can start learning characters in a language I'm familiar with. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Fiveonefive Diglot Groupie Japan Joined 5694 days ago 69 posts - 88 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Swedish | Message 5 of 8 20 August 2012 at 10:30pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Sorry to derail the thread but what are some examples of Chinese characters with different stroke orders in China, Japan, etc...
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| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 6 of 8 20 August 2012 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The Wikipedia article on stroke order has a couple of examples and brief explanations of the differences. According to that picture I've been writing 必 in the ROC & Hong Kong order rather than the Japanese one. Eh, whatever.
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| ZombieKing Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4528 days ago 247 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* | Message 7 of 8 27 August 2012 at 10:40am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Hi Druckfehler! About the difficulty of learning both the traditional and simplified. You will have no trouble with this. Generally, people who know one, can learn the other easily. My mother for example, who is just a normal Taiwanese person, can read both. She's not a scholar of Chinese characters or anything :P Of course, it is easier to go from complex to simple, but because of the way characters were simplified, a good 50% of the simplified characters are the exact same as their traditional counterpart, except that the radical is simplified. There are 214 radicals, however, about 22 have been simplified. So if you learn JUST those 22 simplified radicals, learning 50% of the simplified characters will be as simple as swapping the simplified radical for the traditional one. I also agree that traditional looks better :) But I do prefer a couple of the simplified characters over the traditional ones. For instance, I think 来 (lai2) looks prettier and tidier than it's traditional counterpart 來. But those cases are few and far between xP Also, if you start with simplified, you will find it MUCH easier to learn characters. Whereas if you start with traditional, it will be much much much harder. This is because in traditional, many characters are phonetic, however in simplified, even more are phonetic. Because when the characters were simplified, many that weren't phonetic, were simplified in a way that made that phonetic. And of course, virtually all characters that were already phonetic stayed that way through their simplification. And once you know one of the systems, like I said before, and like many other Chinese learners will agree, learning the other is not so hard. However, because Hanja is all traditional, you'll have to learn traditional first. So it is really up to you in the end. :) Edited by ZombieKing on 27 August 2012 at 10:47am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5536 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 8 of 8 28 August 2012 at 1:22am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I would tend to agree with this. For example, I never explicitly learned the character 国 for country, but the first time I saw it, the context made it obvious that it was the same thing as 國(국) which I had learned explicitly. Granted some characters do look very different between the two sets (for example, 無(무) and 无), but most are identical or at least fairly close. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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