The Difference Between Manga, Manhua, and Manhwa
All those words… what do they mean?
Hi guys! So today I thought I’d take a moment to discuss a few of the tags I have been using and what they mean.
As you all may know, manga refers to Japanese comic books. In fact, manga is simply a Japanese word that means – comic book. Derp. So what about the other two? Well, manhua is the Chinese word for comic book. And manhwa is the Korean word. This is the same standard that Baka-Updates and many other manga sites use to distinguish the origins of each comic book, so I have adopted the same standard. Just for a refresher:
| manga: | Japanese comic book |
| manhua: | Chinese comic book |
| manhwa: | Korean comic book |
| comic book: | American/Western comic book (Marvel, superheroes, etc.) |
| comic strip: | The 4-6 panel stuff you see in newspapers. Some are later converted into comic books (e.g. Calvin and Hobbes) |
| webtoon: | A comic that is not serialized in a book, but originally serialized on the web in a long strip format which requires scrolling to read. Sometimes later adapted into comic book volumes. |
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Thinking that the first 3 words sound the same? You’re absolutely right! Thanks to the common origin of East Asian languages, manga, manhua, and manhwa in fact are all the same word. Both Korean and Japanese derive from Chinese, and if you look at the Chinese characters used to represent the characters in all three languages, they all basically come down to this one: 漫画. However, due to romanization and pronunciation practices of each language, we end up spelling them differently.
And that’s all folks! Hope you learned something useful today. 🙂
I would like to thank you for taking the time to make this and explain it.
Well done. <3