What is Sino-Korean vocabulary?
Q: What is Sino-Korean vocabulary?
A: Sino-Korean vocabulary, or hanja-eo (hangul: 한자어, hanja: 漢子語), are Chinese loanwords in the Korean language.
Q: How is Korean related to Chinese?
A: Chinese is a Sino-Tibetan language while Korean is a language isolate (meaning that no known languages are related to it), but Chinese has influenced Korean so much that it made many changes to the Korean language.
Q: What percentage of the Korean language's vocabulary consists of Chinese loanwords?
A: Around 60% of the language's vocabulary consists of Chinese loanwords.
Q: How does this compare with English words from Latin, French, and Greek?
A: Similarly to English, where around 50% of words come from Latin, French, or Greek, but English speakers tend to use native English words a lot more.
Q: What are the three main sources for Korean words?
A: The three main sources for Korean words are native Korean words, foreign languages such as English, and Chinese loanwords.
Q: How did Japanese influence some meanings of Chinese loanwords in Korea?
A: When some Chinese loanwords changed meanings in Japanese when Korea was under Japanese rule at the time these words changed; they adopted new Japanese meanings when Koreans were allowed to freely speak their own language again.
Q: How have dialects developed differently between North and South Korea since their split?
A: Since the split into two different countries - North Korea and South Korea - their respective dialects have developed very differently from each other.
