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Struggling for memorizing Korean words?

There are two major ways to create words in Korean.

  1. Native words

No idea, you should learn and memorize all. There can be meaningful relation but it is not for you(for Korean native).

e.g. 마시다 to drink
e.g. 사람 person

  1. Sino-Korean words (Chinese Origin)

If you find some relations between words pairs that have similar semantic feature and same syllable, that words are likely to be originated from Chinese.

Let's start with 부모.

e.g. 부모 (父母) parents :: father父 and mother母
e.g. 자녀 (子女) children :: son(man)子 and daughter(woman)女

then you can make (or find)

e.g. 모자 (母子) : mother and son
e.g. 부녀 (父女) : father and daughter

There can be seemingly identical words that have various meanings. They are mostly Sino-korean words(i think).

e.g. 부녀 (婦女) : womenfolk
Plus you have found 부부 (父婦) couple(husband and wife)!

cf. Loanwords

It is just writing pronunciation. There's quite strict loanword orthography.

e.g. 스커트 (skirt : 치마 in native word)
e.g. 가방 (bag, from Japanese)

When you have some questions, let's share them!
Good luck!

November 20, 2017



Great input, thank you. Always nice to have natives around ;)


This helped a lot, thanks! (´･ω･`)


I do better memorizing by how it sounds and relating that to words or phrases I already know. Like 'kippumita' (I am glad); the beginning makes me think of Japanese 'kippu' (ticket), so I think 'ticket to happiness' and I remember the Korean word better. shrugs

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