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Hunmongjahoe

Infomation Museum Collection
Period Joseon/Late Joseon dynasty
Quantity 1
Dimensions 36.4x24.4x2.0
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Relics Description

Hunmongjahoe (訓蒙字會) is a book for teaching Chinese characters to children. It was written by Choe Se-jin (崔世珍, 1468~1542), a translation officer, in 1527 (22nd year of Jungjong). Criticizing The Thousand Character Classic (千字文) and Yuhap (類合), which are popular Chinese character education books for children at that time, for having too many characters with abstract meaning, he published this book urging that teaching Chinese characters to young children should be done with those which represent concrete things such as birds, animals, and plants. Hunmongjahoe contains 3,360 Chinese characters divided into three volumes. The meaning, pronunciation and a simple explanation are given for each character. However, 70% of the whole characters have explanations provided. The preface of the first volume of Hunmongjahoe consists of “Hunmongjaheo-in (훈몽자회인),” which explains the purpose of the book, and “Beomrye (범례),” which are typical examples. At the end of “Beomrye” is “Eonmunjamo (언문자모)” or “consonants and vowels of Korean alphabets,” which is a short description of the Hangeul system and usage. “Pyeongsanggeoipjeongwijido”, a diagram explaining the intonations of the sound is also included. “Eonmunjamo” represents the pronunciation of each Korean character using Chinese characters . Such pronunciation representation was used like a name for the Hangeul letter, and it continues to be used today.