Sometime, when putting the office messages through Google Translate, something will catch my eye. Today there was some sort of schedule change for the 3rd graders. One of the subjects that were mentioned was 한자쓰기 (Chinese Letters Writing). That in itself is not interesting. The fact that Google translates it as 한자 as “Kanji” which is the Japanese name for “Chinese Letters”. Korean is “Hanja”, pretty close, but not the same thing.
I find Hanja quite interesting, not to study, but just to think about. I read once that the literacy rate in Korea is something like 98% and it would be even higher, if that was possible, if people didn’t have to learn Chinese Letters. Why they still learn I is unknown to me. I suspect it is a bit like learning Latin because it gives Koreans an insight in to a part of their language.
As for using it outside of school... many of the older Koreans can read quite a bit of Chinese and it seems they studied it much more intensely when they were in school. It also seems that not so long ago quite a few signs and even news papers used quite a bit of Chinese, and if you couldn’t read it your would be a bit like a newbie English teacher.
If I ever get around to mastering more Korean, I might actually start learning some Hanja. Apparently it is quite interesting.
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