Hanja

High school (ages 12+)
History & Culture

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/hanja

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the writing system?Logographic Chinese characters (漢字) adapted for the Korean language, known as Hanja
2. What are Hanja and why are they called picture words?Hanja are Chinese characters that Korea uses. Each character looks like a picture that shows a meaning, so they are called picture words.
3. How did Hanja become part of Korean writing?First, Hanja were used to write Chinese. Later, Koreans adapted them to write Korean sounds and words, creating systems like Idu.

Hanja: Chinese characters historically and sometimes currently used in the Korean language, representing words or syllables.
Hangul: The native Korean alphabet, a phonetic system that has largely replaced Hanja for everyday writing due to its ease of learning.
Sino-Korean vocabulary: A significant portion of the Korean lexicon derived from Chinese words, whose meanings are often clarified by their Hanja origins.
Hanmun: Classical Chinese writing, which was the primary written language in Korea for centuries before the widespread adoption of Hangul.