The Chinese characters were used in Korea during the Three Kingdom periods. So when this Chinese characters were introduced to the ancient Koreans, they immediately used Chinese characters to record their own language. They took the advantage over the pronunciation and the meaning of Chinese characters to describe what we, as the modern Koreans describe in Hangul.
There have two systems for writing Koreans words by means of Chinese characters. These two systems are Idu and Hyangchal . Hyangchal is a system required all the Korean words to be written in Chinese characters while Idu is a system that describes nouns, verbs and adjectives in Chinese characters.
The aristocracy was the pioneer class who used Chinese characters in Korea. This the reason why Chinese characters have a strong influence on the Korean language. As a matter in fact, it is historically stated that the language used by the highly civilized people is passed down along with its culture to the lower class people in respect to the cultural values. in other words, the highly civilized people influenced the lower class people in terms of language use and cultures. Another reason is because the native language lacks of vocabulary .
According to the dictionary of Modern Korean published by Korean Language Research Society, out of all the 164,125 words of Chinese characters ,only 52% originated from Chinese while 45% originated from the locals. The fact that the Chinese characters occupied more than half of the total vocabulary of Modern Korean is due to the long predominant of Chinese learning over Korean culture in the past. Other than that, many Chinese characters can be seen in the technical term especially in economy, law and natural science.Example , [democracy] 民主主义(minzhuzhuyi).
Although Chinese characters originated from China, those Chinese characters are still used in the Korean language but the pronunciation can be differed from the Chinese phonetic system and have been completely adapted to Korean phonetic system. Example 'parents' , the pronunciation in Korean ,Chinese and Japanese are different respectively. Korean: pumo , Japanese : fubo , Chinese : fumu.
There have two systems for writing Koreans words by means of Chinese characters. These two systems are Idu and Hyangchal . Hyangchal is a system required all the Korean words to be written in Chinese characters while Idu is a system that describes nouns, verbs and adjectives in Chinese characters.
The aristocracy was the pioneer class who used Chinese characters in Korea. This the reason why Chinese characters have a strong influence on the Korean language. As a matter in fact, it is historically stated that the language used by the highly civilized people is passed down along with its culture to the lower class people in respect to the cultural values. in other words, the highly civilized people influenced the lower class people in terms of language use and cultures. Another reason is because the native language lacks of vocabulary .
According to the dictionary of Modern Korean published by Korean Language Research Society, out of all the 164,125 words of Chinese characters ,only 52% originated from Chinese while 45% originated from the locals. The fact that the Chinese characters occupied more than half of the total vocabulary of Modern Korean is due to the long predominant of Chinese learning over Korean culture in the past. Other than that, many Chinese characters can be seen in the technical term especially in economy, law and natural science.Example , [democracy] 民主主义(minzhuzhuyi).
Although Chinese characters originated from China, those Chinese characters are still used in the Korean language but the pronunciation can be differed from the Chinese phonetic system and have been completely adapted to Korean phonetic system. Example 'parents' , the pronunciation in Korean ,Chinese and Japanese are different respectively. Korean: pumo , Japanese : fubo , Chinese : fumu.
Reference:
1. Wong, Huh, and Kim Chin-u. Korean Language. Korean and United State: Si-sa-yong-o-sa, Inc, 1983.
1. Wong, Huh, and Kim Chin-u. Korean Language. Korean and United State: Si-sa-yong-o-sa, Inc, 1983.