Nguyễn Tiến Hải: 6000 most common Korean words, English translation and examples

Author: Nguyen Tien Hai

6000 most common Korean words sorted in the order of decreased frequency

In December 2004 [1], The National Institute of Korean Language in South Korea (국립국어원) published the list of 6000 most common Korean words. These words are sorted in the order of their appearance (frequency) in the Korean text and their complex degree (i.e. the difficult degree for understanding their meanings). Therefore, you just need to study only a few words in this list to understand the whole content of a Korean text (over 90%) as well as everyday conversations of Korean people for sure. This study method is very effective indeed. This comprehensive research work was the effort of many scholars in the Korean language education field. (The first word in the list appears most frequently, in almost every sentence, the frequency of other following words will be decreased gradually.)

There are about 500,000 words in the Korean vocabulary (among them 190,000 technique terms, 70,000 North Korean words, 20,000 words related to religions, and 12,000 old words included) [10]. Therefore, if you try to study all of these 500,000 words without a scientific method, you will not be able to remember them. You will not be able to understand what Korean people say in the daily life or read books/papers written in Korean language. Why do you have to study words that you never use them, while there are many words you have to use/speak often but you do not know them. Why do you have to study names of animals in Korean such as dynosaur or camel that you almost never meet in your daily life? Therefore, you should learn words with priority, you should choose which words need to study first. If you know 6000 words in the list provide in this post you will be able to understand anything Korean person speaks, every sentence in books or papers written in Korean language.

It's rare to see the words that you don't know their meaning. Even when you meet them, you can also easily guess their meanings by using the context. You can also derive their meanings from words that you have already studied.

About 60% vocabulary of Korean language has the root from Chinese language, we call these words as Sino-Korean words or Hanja. Only 35% Korean vocabulary are pure Korean words. The remainder (5%) are rent words from other languages, most of them from English (called as broken English) and French).

For example: the word 학생 (hak seng) has the Janja 學生. 學 (hak) means "study". Next time when you meet a word with 학 component you do not need to look up the dictionary, you can guess its meaning. For example: 학습 (hak seup) - study and practice, 학비 (hak pi) fee for study, 과학 (kwa hak) - science, 문학 (moon hak) study of literature,...

The component 생 (seng) is similar, 생활 (seng hwal), 생일 (seng il) date of birth, 생존 (seng chon), 희생 (hee seng), 고생 (ko seng), ...

These Hanja words are today used in Korean newspapers and TV broadcast! (even when a Korean man/woman write his/her full name accompany with its Hanja. Hanja is also seen in pagodas, palaces, university dormitories. Moreover, the requirement for TOPIK 5 or 6 examination include thousands of Hanja, thus it will be very useful for you in the future if you study Hanja.

However, to study Janja is not easy. At first step, you just need to remember how a Janja is pronounced which is not difficult and help you much when remembering the words and in guessing the meaning of the new word.

(To listen to how a Korean word is pronounce, you can use Korean-Korean dictionary (http://krdic.naver.com) or via google translate. First, you need to know Korean alphabet pronunciation (see here).

*For example, the word 작년 (last year), you go to website http://krdic.naver.com and type 작년.

Another way to listen not only how a word is pronounced but also how a whole sentence is pronounced is to go to http://translate.google.com/, type the Korean text and click on the speaker symbol http://translate.google.com/#ko/vi/%EC%9E%91%EB%85%84 ).

Naver Korean-English dictionary is also used to look through the word meaning and examples http://endic.naver.com.

For a normal person, it costs an average of 5 minutes to memorize a word deeply. After you study a new word sometime, you will forget it, that is usual. You need to study again, about 5-6 times, then you will never forget it, so please do not be in a hurry :). As said in the book "The word brain" you should study the words as the following rule: study a new word on day 0, remind it on day 1, 3, 6, 10, 17 and 31.

Note: The list below contains 6000 most Korean common words, there meanings and sample sentences with the translation in English. All rights reserved Nguyen Tien Hai. You are not allowed to copy, re-post, or modify them without author's permission in the text format.

Categories (parts of speech):

명사 (名詞: danh·từ) = noun;

동사 (動詞: động·từ) = verb;

의존명사 (依存名詞: y·tồn danh·từ): danh·từ phụ·thuộc = bound noun,dependent noun;

대명사 (代名詞: đại·danh·từ): đại·từ nhân·xưng = pronoun;

형용사 (形容詞: hình·dung·từ): tính·từ = adjective;

관형사 (冠形詞: quán·hình·từ) = determiner;

부사 (副詞: phụ·từ) = adverb

사동사 (使動詞: sử·động·từ) = causative verb (xem bài viết về sử động từ tiếng Hàn)

자동사 (自動詞: tự·động·từ) nội·động·từ = intransitive verb (xem bài viết về tự động từ tiếng Hàn)

타동사 (他動詞: tha·động·từ) ngoại·động·từ = transitive verb (xem bài viết về tha động từ tiếng Hàn )

피동사 (被動詞: bị·động·từ) động·từ bị·động = passive verb

주동사 (主動詞: chủ·động·từ)

능동사 (能動詞: năng·động·từ) modal verb (?)

조동사 (助動詞: trợ·động·từ) = auxiliary verb

Index

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