Now, if you’re also familiar with simplified Chinese you might actually notice that the top 10 most common traditional Chinese characters are written exactly the same as their simplified counterpart. Play Want to discover Simplified Chinese as well? Check out the top 50 here Traditional Chinese Characters List: 1-10 If this is starting to feel a little overwhelming then relax!Ĭharacters are actually made up from a varying amount of Chinese radicals, so once you’ve become familiar with these it’ll begin to get easier to recognise characters.

In 2013 the Chinese government published a list of 3,500 essential characters which is the minimum that Chinese school children are expected to learn. ⬇️⬇️⬇️ Top 100 Traditional Chinese Characters Quiz ⬇️⬇️⬇️ After you’ve studied this blog test your knowledge on the top 100 most common traditional Chinese Characters. In fact it’s estimated that you only need to know around 3,000 characters to be able to read most things. However, most modern day dictionaries commonly have around 20,000 characters.įor example, the Modern Chinese Language Dictionary (現代漢語詞典 xiàndài hànyǔ cídiǎn) has 12,500 characters.Īre you really expected to learn that many characters!? According to the Taiwan Ministry of Education’s 2004 Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants (異體字字典, Yìtǐzì zìdiǎn) the figure is 106,230!! Well the answer to that isn’t actually as straight forward as you might think it is. Make sure to have a read of our Traditional Chinese vs Simplified Chinese blog if you’re not sure what the difference is.īut you might be wondering, how many characters actually are there?

Chinese characters flashcards pdf