Handbook of Korean Vocabulary: A Resource for Word Recognition and Comprehension

This book can't be used like a dictionary or a textbook in the traditional sense. The secret to learning Korean is learning how to think in Korean. This book gives some really good common vocabulary by their Chinese (and some pure Korean) roots. It's great for learning Chinese roots as well as associated words. I've never seen a book like this and highly recommend it. It's a great vocabulary builder.But it is for people who are serious about learning Korean and won't do a casual studier any good. Also, unless you already have a solid grasp on grammar and the language, this book needs to be used in conjunction with other resources.

This is simply the most useful resource book I have come across in learning Korean. It's especially useful if you don't know the hancha (Chinese characters) as it groups Korean words according to their Hancha origins, so you can see how different words connect without having to learn the characters. It really helps to provide a structure and logic to the language, which otherwise seems very confusing to the Western student.I would recommend this book to anyone who already has a good understanding of basic Korean grammar and vocabulary. It will help consolidate what you already know and will really speed up the expansion of your vocabulary and your understanding of Korean generally.

I don't make recommendations/endorsements very often and I don't take them lightly. For this text, though, I can't say enough. I can't really say much more than has already been written beyond saying that I, too, would highly recommend this text for someone who is beyond basic/early intermediate Korean. It's really quite a worthwhile investment.

I don't think that this book will be of great use for the begining student but for the more advanced student it is great. Korean is full of two syllable word that sound remarkably similar so memorizing them is very difficult. But this book shows you what those syllables really mean and the logical way Korean word are made. With that information memorizing those words is a lot easier. One nice addition to this book would be having the meanings of the Chinese characters given to you in Korean.

What else can be said of this book? It is well organized, easy to read and use, chocked full of words so that you can not only learn everyday stuff, but so that you can get a grasp of some of the nuances of the language and characters."The Handbook" has two parts: Chinese based vocabulary and native Korean vocabulary. Both are organized according to phonemes and grouped by ideograph. Also, there are no stupid romanizations to get in the way. My only gripe about "The Handbook" is that sometimes the font seems a little small. I wish that the han-mun were printed larger to make the number of strokes (and the strokes themselves) more distinct.This book will take you where you left off with Bruce Grant's 'Guide to Korean Characters.' Where in Grant's book, you have the basic 1,800, in "The Handbook" you have many many many many many more. The styles of the books are completely different though. This book definitely presupposes a good working knowledge of Korean. (Otherwise, what's the sense of looking up all of these words for their chinese roots?)Anyway, terrific book for those who are not yet Korean scholars to help them become Korean scholars.