How Many Characters Are There in Chinese?

In the etymological dictionary entitled Shuo Wen Jie Zi (说文解字, Notes on Language and Characters, usually abbreviated as Shuowen) compiled by Xu Shen (许慎) in the Eastern Han Dynasty (121 AD), there were 9,353 characters.
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This is a monumental compilation of Chinese characters, especially when one considers that it was completed nearly 1,900 years ago. Many present day studies are still based on this work and the study of Shuowen itself has become a highly respected discipline. The Kang Xi Dictionary (康熙字典), which was completed in 1710, contains 47,035 words. This dictionary is named after the Qing Emperor Kang Xi who ruled China from 1662-1723 and ordered the compilation of the dictionary. The Emperor himself wrote the preface for the dictionary. A Sea of Chinese Characters (中华字海) published in 1994 by Leng Yulong and Wei Yixin lists more than 85,000 characters. This is the largest number of recorded Chinese characters in history. However, many of the characters in large dictionaries like this have variant forms. For example, In Hanyu Da Zidian (汉语大字典), another large dictionary published in the 1980's with 56,000 characters, the character 宝 (treasure or precious) has 13 variant forms. Imagine if we had 13 different spellings for the English word "precious," how are we ever going to communicate with each other in writing! This very fact attests to the need for reform and simplification of the Chinese characters.

While the total number of characters is overwhelming, many of them have overlapping meanings or are variants of other characters. For practical purpose, one only needs to have a small repertoire to be able to read and write adequately. It is said that it is only necessary to learn 2,000 characters to be able to understand 94% of all newspaper articles and books. An average educated person masters about 3,500 to 5,000 characters and can function properly in daily life and work.

Characters are combined to form words while most of the characters themselves can be considered as single character words. The commonly used 3,000-5,000 characters can easily create 40,000, 50,000 or even more words. In Chinese, there are many two-character words and four-character idioms. Chinese characters have many homophones. It is not uncommon that when you type in the pinyin of one character, you end up with a list of dozens or even hundreds of characters for you to choose from. Therefore, when you say a one-character word, people might wonder which character you are talking about. That is probably why we have so many two-character words in Chinese. Sometimes, though a character is complete in meaning by itself, we still add another character to make it a two-character word. An example will be 桌子(a desk or table, pronounced as zhuo). The 桌 by itself is already conveying the same meaning as 桌子. A meaningless 子 is added to make it sounds differently from other characters with the same pronunciation as 桌. Many two character words are formed similarly. The four-character idioms or set phrases usually allude to some historical events or legends and are rich in cultural contents and historical moral values.
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There are 2235 simplified Chinese characters in the General Chart, which was issued in 1986.

Lily recommend you Best tools to learn to read Chinese characters

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