Japanese + Korean
Japanese and Korean share a vocabulary built from the same Chinese characters.
Much of the vocabulary of both languages is built from Chinese characters, read two ways. Learn 学生 in Japanese and 학생 in Korean is waiting for you. Polygelato shows the two side by side, with readings in Hepburn and Revised Romanization.
Free to start: five languages and 100 lookups a month. Repeats from the shared cache are free.
student
English- 日本語
学生
gakusei
- 한국어
학생
haksaeng
- 中文
学生
xuésheng
Roots they share
電話denwa전화jeonhwa
← 電話, “electric speech”
The same two characters, read in each language’s own way.
図書館toshokan도서관doseogwan
← 圖書館, “hall of books”
Japanese writes 図, its postwar shinjitai form (Chinese simplifies it differently, to 图). Korean’s hanja spelling keeps 圖. The word is the same.
アルバイトarubaito아르바이트areubaiteu
← German Arbeit, “work”
Japanese took it from German, and Korean most likely by way of Japanese. Both use it for a part-time job.
And where they part
공부gongbu工夫kufū
The same two characters, 工夫. Korean 공부 is study; Japanese くふう is working out a clever way to do something. Study in Japanese is 勉強 (benkyō).
Look it up, keep it, and review it from one language into the other.
Saved words build your own wordbank, and spaced repetition brings them back at the right time — including cards that ask in one of your languages and answer in another. Study is free on every plan.