How Many Chinese Characters Exist?

How many characters do you have to know to be able to read a Chinese newspaper? And how many Chinese characters exist in total?

Chinese children learn 3000 characters in the first six school years. This is sufficient for reading books and newspapers. Chinese who can master more than 1500 characters are regarded as literate. Educated Chinese have internalized about 6000 characters. With the knowledge of the most common 3500 characters you are at least able to read about 99.7% of a text.

The exact number of Chinese characters varied during the different dynasties. In the course of time various dictionaries were written which included different numbers of characters. At the time of the "shell-and-bone" style of writing there were already about 4000 characters in use. The Kangxi Cidian (康熙辞典) (18th century) which was compiled during the time of the Qing dynasty (清朝), includes almost 50 000 Chinese characters.

The "Hanyu da cidian" (汉语大词典) (Big Chinese Dictionary) published in 1990 also is comprised of about 50.000 characters. The oldest dictionary is the "Shuowen jiezi" (说文解字) (The Explanation of Writing) dating back to 121 A.D.

Modern dictionaries for daily use include fewer characters. The widely used classical dictionary "Mathew's Chinese- English Dictionary" contains 7773 characters. With this vocabulary you can at least translate most texts used in textbooks. The "Neue Chinesisch- Deutsche Wörterbuch" (New Chinese- German Dictionary) contains about 6000 characters. Modern Chinese computer programs also comprise only a limited number of characters, about 6000 characters.

Reference: http://knows.jongo.com/res/article/13559

How to Use a Dictionary

"叨"The component that represents the meaning of a character is called the radical or basic picture that conveys meaning. On the basis of this radical Chinese characters can be arranged and looked up in the dictionary. There are 214 radicals whilst the number of characters varies among Chinese dictionaries. A character is found by picking out the radical. The radical of the example given in the previous article on the composition of Chinese characters is the component on the left, the "mouth":

"口"3 strokes

First of all, you have to find the radical in a list of 214 radicals, which can be found in the dictionary. Each radical has a number. The radicals are sorted according to the number of strokes. "Mouth" consists of three strokes and has the number 50 (unfortunately there is no standardized list. Therefore the numbers of the radicals may vary.). In a second list you find all the characters arranged according to their radicals. Secondly, you have to count the total number of strokes added to the radical.

"刀"2 strokes

In the second list all the characters with the radical number 50 and two additional strokes are listed and you can find the searched character and the page of the dictionary where it can be found. On this page the meaning and the pronunciation can be looked up. That procedure seems complicated at first glance but with a little practice you look words the characters up as quickly as in English- French or English-German dictionaries for example. Advanced students know the most important of the 214 radicals by heart and therefore only use the second list to look for the page in the dictionary.

Reference: http://knows.jongo.com/res/article/13558

This article is provided by Jongo.