Chinese characters: how they work, and the ones you need first

Is there a Chinese alphabet?

No. Where English builds every word out of 26 letters, Chinese gives each syllable its own character, and each character carries a meaning as well as a sound. 人 (rén) means person, 山 (shān) mountain, 水 (shuǐ) water. Words are made by combining them: 火山 — fire + mountain — is a volcano.

What people often call the Chinese alphabet is pinyin: the official way to write the sounds of Chinese in Latin letters, with marks for the four tones (mā, má, mǎ, mà). Pinyin is how learners learn pronunciation and how almost everyone types Chinese — you type the sound and pick the character. But nobody reads pinyin in daily life: signs, books and messages are written in characters.

How a Chinese character works

Many characters are built from smaller parts, and once you see the parts they stop looking like random strokes. Some combine two meanings:

The last kind is by far the most common: by the usual estimates, around four in five characters pair a part that hints at the meaning with a part that hints at the sound. The hints are clues, not rules — sounds have shifted over three thousand years — but they make characters far easier to remember than they look.

How many Chinese characters are there?

It depends on what you count. The Kangxi Dictionary of 1716 lists 47,035 characters, and the largest modern dictionaries pass 85,000, most of them rare, archaic or variant forms. China’s official Table of General Standard Chinese Characters (2013) lists 8,105 for modern use, of which 3,500 are marked as common.

What matters to a learner is how often you meet them. Chinese leans heavily on its most common characters, so each new one you learn adds a little less than the one before:

Share of running text in Jun Da’s frequency list of modern Chinese, about 193 million characters. The course follows its own frequency order, which is close to this one but not identical, so read these as close estimates. And they count characters, not words: knowing every character in a sentence is not the same as knowing what it means.

Move the slider to see it on a real paragraph: the characters you would know at each stage are dark, the rest are grey.

The 100 most common Chinese characters

These are the first 100 characters of our course, in frequency order, with their main meanings in English. Many are grammar words like 的 (de), 了 (le) and 不 (bù) that turn up in nearly every sentence.

1. 的#1deof; (possessive)
2. 是#2shìto be; is, am, are
3. 了#3le(completed action marker)
4. 不#4bùnot; no
5. 们#5men(plural marker for people)
6. 这#6zhèthis; these
7. 有#7yǒuto have; there is
8. 要#8yàoto want; will
9. 就#9jiùthen; right away
10. 到#10dàoto arrive; to
11. 说#11shuōto speak; to say
12. 能#12néngcan; to be able to
13. 我#13wǒI; me
14. 你#14nǐyou
15. 他#15tāhe; him
16. 在#16zàiat; in
17. 个#17gè(general measure word)
18. 好#18hǎogood; well
19. 来#19láito come
20. 会#20huìcan; will
21. 开#21kāito open; to start
22. 没#22méinot; to not have
23. 为#23wèifor; because of
24. 想#24xiǎngto think; to want
25. 去#25qùto go
26. 道#26dàoway; road
27. 里#27lǐinside; in
28. 一#28yīone
29. 人#29rénperson; people
30. 上#30shàngup; on
31. 很#31hěnvery
32. 过#32guòto pass; (past experience marker)
33. 时#33shítime; hour
34. 现#34xiànnow; present
35. 那#35nàthat; those
36. 什#36shénwhat (in 什么)
37. 看#37kànto look; to watch
38. 可#38kěcan; may
39. 知#39zhīto know
40. 得#40déto get; to obtain
41. 还#41háistill; also
42. 子#42zǐchild; son
43. 下#43xiàdown; below
44. 出#44chūto go out; to come out
45. 吧#45ba(suggestion particle)
46. 以#46yǐwith; by
47. 也#47yěalso; too
48. 起#48qǐto rise; to get up
49. 只#49zhǐonly
50. 意#50yìmeaning; idea
51. 都#51dōuall; both
52. 事#52shìmatter; thing
53. 生#53shēngto be born; life
54. 样#54yàngkind; way
55. 大#55dàbig; large
56. 点#56diǎndot; point
57. 对#57duìcorrect; right
58. 怎#58zěnhow (in 怎么)
59. 家#59jiāhome; family
60. 多#60duōmany; much
61. 真#61zhēnreal; true
62. 给#62gěito give; for
63. 天#63tiānday; sky
64. 把#64bǎto hold; (object marker)
65. 如#65rúlike; as
66. 自#66zìself; from
67. 回#67huíto return; to go back
68. 别#68biédo not; other
69. 所#69suǒplace; (in 所以 = so)
70. 然#70ránso; thus
71. 让#71ràngto let; to allow
72. 再#72zàiagain; once more
73. 做#73zuòto do; to make
74. 些#74xiēsome; a few
75. 小#75xiǎosmall; little
76. 么#76me(question suffix, as in 什么)
77. 话#77huàwords; speech
78. 发#78fāto send out; to issue
79. 着#79zhe(ongoing action marker)
80. 心#80xīnheart; mind
81. 和#81héand; with
82. 该#82gāishould; ought to
83. 用#83yòngto use
84. 听#84tīngto listen; to hear
85. 见#85jiànto see; to meet
86. 当#86dāngto be; to act as
87. 最#87zuìmost; -est
88. 定#88dìngto decide; to fix
89. 前#89qiánfront; before
90. 后#90hòuback; after
91. 果#91guǒfruit; result
92. 走#92zǒuto walk; to go
93. 经#93jīngto pass through; classic
94. 地#94dìground; earth
95. 从#95cóngfrom; to follow
96. 打#96dǎto hit; to play
97. 明#97míngbright; clear
98. 因#98yīnbecause; reason
99. 行#99xíngto walk; OK
100. 太#100tàitoo; extremely

Only the first one or two meanings are shown; many characters have more. The order is the course’s own frequency ranking, which is close to, but not identical with, other frequency lists.

Simplified or traditional characters?

There are two standard ways to write Chinese. Simplified characters, introduced in mainland China in the 1950s and 1960s, are used in mainland China and Singapore. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Many characters are the same in both; others lost strokes in simplification:

If you are not sure which to learn, start with simplified: it is what most learners and most Chinese readers use, and it is what this course teaches. Readers of one set usually learn to recognise the other without much trouble.

Characters that look alike

The real difficulty is not the number of characters but the ones that look alike. 干, 工, 士, 王 and 土 differ by a stroke or two, and in frequency order you meet them months apart — long enough to learn the first one well and then have the second blur into it:

Learned side by side, the differences are easy to see. That is why our course teaches characters in sets of look-alikes rather than one at a time.

How to learn Chinese characters

You do not need to learn them all, and you do not need a pen. Most Chinese today is typed, so what you need is to recognise a character on sight and know its sound and meaning. What works:

• Start with the most common characters, so every one you learn is one you keep meeting.
• Learn look-alikes together, so you learn the difference instead of the mix-up.
• Review on a schedule: shortly after learning, then at growing intervals, just before you would forget.
• Learn the meanings in your own language, so no card costs you an extra translation step.

Questions