A Study on the Korean and Chinese Pronunciations of Chinese Characters and Learning Korean as a Second Language

Sino-Korean words have their etymological roots in Chinese characters. Previous studies showed that the correspondent relation between Chinese and the Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters facilitates the reading of Sino-Korean words by Chinese learners of Korean as a second language (L2). This study quantifies such correspondence at the syllable level by calculating the degree of correspondence in Korean-Chinese syllables. The degree of correspondence between Korean and Chinese syllables was examined. Results show that among the 406 Chinese character families in Sino-Korean words, 22.7% have an average correspondent consistency lower than 0.5 and 33.3% are equal to or higher than 0.5 but lower than 1. Suggestions for teaching and learning Korean as an L2 are proposed.