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Chinese Characters
How many are there?
Let's trace the
number of Chinese characters from Han Dynasty 汉朝 (206 B.C. to 220 A.D.)
说文解字 - The first
complete dictionary that listed all Chinese characters was published in
Han Dynasty 汉朝 at around
100 A.D. It was regarded as the the origin of Chinese characters. It
included 9,353 characters.
康
熙字典(Kangxi) - the well known classic of Chinese dictionary was
published in 1716 of Qing Dynasty 清朝. The Kangxi dictionary included
about 46,964 characters compiled in 42 booklets. Most of the
characters were unused and rare variant accumulated over the centuries.
Those characters were regrouped under 214 radicals still in use today
in many dictionaries to classified characters in traditional form.
The first official simplified form characters were published in 1956 by
the People's Republic of China. Many additions and modifications to the
original list were adopted since. The list included 6,500 simplified
characters.
Nowadays
the simplified form characters are used in China and Singapore, the
traditional form characters are still used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and
most of the overseas Chinese communities.
In
1952, literacy for peasants was defined as knowledge of 1,500
characters and literacy for labour workers as knowledge of 2,000
characters.
A well educated person can probably recognize more than 6,000
characters.
Since
Chinese words are generally composed of two or three characters, a few
thousand characters can be used to understand hundreds and thousands of
words.
The
Chinese computerized fonts for words processor include 6,500 characters
of the simplified form and 13,500 of the traditional form.
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