What's total number of Chinese characters, how many of them do average Chinese use?- eChinacities Answers

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Aoi

Posts: 36

Shifu

Q: What's total number of Chinese characters, how many of them do average Chinese use?

14 years 42 weeks ago in Culture - China

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HappyExPat

Posts: 3025

Emperor

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In traditional Chinese, there are about 80,000 different characters, but many are seldom used. Chinese Government came up with "Simplified Chinese" which has about 2,235 characters, but an educated Chinese may know from 3,000 to 5,000 characters in total.

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14 years 42 weeks ago

bradb

Posts: 73

Shifu

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IMHO learning the most common 400 or so will get you through the majority of newspaper articles.

cooter:

An old post, I know. But that's a crock. I know 800+ and can't get very far.....

12 years 51 weeks ago

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14 years 42 weeks ago

dom87

Posts: 1198

Shifu

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oh only 400, yet image our alphabet has 26 Q_Q

Hulk:

But English has over 400,000 words, I think.

12 years 51 weeks ago

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dom87:

well words you have to learn in every language, so chinese.

chinese can read english, other people cant read chinese. Clearly an advantage

12 years 51 weeks ago

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12 years 51 weeks ago

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