Hi! I just wrote to ask how many chinese characters are there excluding the simplified characters?
how about this site? how many chars. does the chinese character dictionary have here in this site?
Thank's a lot.
Richard
How many chinese charactees are there?
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Thomas Chan
Re: How many chinese charactees are there?
richard wrote:
>
> Hi! I just wrote to ask how many chinese characters are there
> excluding the simplified characters?
It depends on who you ask. The _Zhonghua Zi Hai_ (1994)
dictionary has over 85,000. Subtract a few thousand simplified characters,
and that still leaves over 80,000.
> how about this site? how many chars. does the chinese
> character dictionary have here in this site?
Over 70,000.
Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu
>
> Hi! I just wrote to ask how many chinese characters are there
> excluding the simplified characters?
It depends on who you ask. The _Zhonghua Zi Hai_ (1994)
dictionary has over 85,000. Subtract a few thousand simplified characters,
and that still leaves over 80,000.
> how about this site? how many chars. does the chinese
> character dictionary have here in this site?
Over 70,000.
Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu
-
Christian Stichler
Re: How many chinese charactees are there?
Hello Richard,
try this less horrifying explanation:
Mainland China sets the limit for illiteracy at the knowledge of some 2,000 characters. Someone capable of some 5,000 characters is said to be able to read a newspaper completely, including articles on sports, culture, science and technology e.t.c. An average university graduate is expected to comprehend some 8,000 characters. All these figures are, of course, very rough and approximate estimations.
Character stocks of Mainland China word processing software contain somewhat more than 6,000 characters. Even in pretty specialized contexts, one pretty rarely does not find the right one. I remember to have encountered such situation when having delt with Traditional Chinese pharmacology once or twice.
There is a very popular pocket character encyclopedia in Mainalnd China called Xin Hua Zi Dian "New China Character Compendium". In the size of two king size cigarette pockets it lists some 11,100 characters on some 600 pages. An undergraduate is considered to have come across all of them during his, approximately, 20 years or so of lifetime. I would consider this to be a figure representytive for the, let me say, graphic stock of the modern Chinese language. This, by far, does not mean that any Chinese, even highly educated one, would be capable of all of them.
It is true that old and large dictionaries do list immense numbers of characters. I remember a lower number than Thomas, above, but anyway. The number of more than 70,000 as being listed in this site, to me, is very impressive. We see that a vast number of characters is in fact not in use in modern times any more; this, e.g., goes for very diversified and sophisticated graphic expressions for mystic and religious phenomena, sacrificial vessels, sacred instruments and equipment, as well as ancient weapons, music instruments, clothing, e.t.c. Moreover, there were and are variations in the writing of a character of one and the same meaning.
In the 50ies and 60ies, a number of characters had been simplified in the Peoples Republic. Another number of characters had been standardized or unified by then, too. I'd rather call it a "Reform in Writing" than just a "Simplification", although it, at the end of the day, did aim at making the complicated way of Chinese writing more simple, and did reduce the number of currently applied characters.
Christian
try this less horrifying explanation:
Mainland China sets the limit for illiteracy at the knowledge of some 2,000 characters. Someone capable of some 5,000 characters is said to be able to read a newspaper completely, including articles on sports, culture, science and technology e.t.c. An average university graduate is expected to comprehend some 8,000 characters. All these figures are, of course, very rough and approximate estimations.
Character stocks of Mainland China word processing software contain somewhat more than 6,000 characters. Even in pretty specialized contexts, one pretty rarely does not find the right one. I remember to have encountered such situation when having delt with Traditional Chinese pharmacology once or twice.
There is a very popular pocket character encyclopedia in Mainalnd China called Xin Hua Zi Dian "New China Character Compendium". In the size of two king size cigarette pockets it lists some 11,100 characters on some 600 pages. An undergraduate is considered to have come across all of them during his, approximately, 20 years or so of lifetime. I would consider this to be a figure representytive for the, let me say, graphic stock of the modern Chinese language. This, by far, does not mean that any Chinese, even highly educated one, would be capable of all of them.
It is true that old and large dictionaries do list immense numbers of characters. I remember a lower number than Thomas, above, but anyway. The number of more than 70,000 as being listed in this site, to me, is very impressive. We see that a vast number of characters is in fact not in use in modern times any more; this, e.g., goes for very diversified and sophisticated graphic expressions for mystic and religious phenomena, sacrificial vessels, sacred instruments and equipment, as well as ancient weapons, music instruments, clothing, e.t.c. Moreover, there were and are variations in the writing of a character of one and the same meaning.
In the 50ies and 60ies, a number of characters had been simplified in the Peoples Republic. Another number of characters had been standardized or unified by then, too. I'd rather call it a "Reform in Writing" than just a "Simplification", although it, at the end of the day, did aim at making the complicated way of Chinese writing more simple, and did reduce the number of currently applied characters.
Christian