500 most common Chinese Characters

[zh-laoshi]

I've received a few e-mails requesting the 500 most common Chinese characters. I was out of town for a little while and wasn't able to send them (apologies to all ). But if you want them, I put them on my website. It's in MS Word format. The characters are in simplified form, if you need the traditional forms, I can make the conversion for you.

The thing is, it uses the Asian Phonetic guide to every character, if your version of MS Word doesn't support it, let me know and I'll create one without the phonetic guide. For those of you who don't have MS Word, I can try making one for you in either a Unicode text file, or in HTML.

If you can learn these 500 characters, you'll be able to read about 80% of a newspaper in Chinese.

The URL to view or download them is:

http://www.speakuplanguages.com/Chinese/500_characters.doc

Have fun!

P.S. - Also, apologies for not having the Chinese pronunciations pages updated, I'm working on them again and will have them up as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

[francisco_seq23]

hi

I disagree with this list, I know all of these characters but i still cannot read 80% of newspapers. There are many technical words that you need to learn, maybe if you make a list of words in different categories like medical, politics, news, economic,, etc..... make a list of words that are mcommon in each topic to familiarize yourself better

[Shi Rui'en]

I am having problems seeing any of the characters. I'm not sure what that means as I'm not the best when it comes to computers. Anyways, if you do get something else up please let all of us know. Thanks.

[39degN]

zh-laoshi, a good work! but i m not sure if these characters will work to learners, as i believe single character doesnt make more sence in this case, and vocabularies will do. just MHO.

for example, by a quick looking, i found there's the character 爱, but no 情, then when they see 爱情, they may cant get the meaning; or 当, but no 然, saw 当然, get puzzled. :-)

[kokleong]

It's been awhile since I've gone to this:

http://people.netscape.com/ftang/chineselearning/howmanychinese.html

I use the work done here myself to supplement my other methods of study.

http://www.geocities.com/hao510/charfreq/

But I must point out it is based on usenet postings way back in 1993-94. Your mileage will vary.

As 39degN pointed out some words occur more frequently in groups. So blindly memorising single characters won't necessarily improve your reading abilities. I'm speaking from experience. Right now I may be able to read some complete sentences as I can recognise the characters but I can't comprehend those sentences -- only make best guesses.

[zh-laoshi]

If you can learn these 500 characters, you'll be able to read about 80% of a newspaper in Chinese.

The point of this quote is that you learn these 500 characters, you'll be able to create a couple of thousand more compunds that will allow someone learning Chinese to read a newspaper.

It's obvious that in order to learn a language, you're not just learning one word at a time, you're learning sentences. If a student knows that in pinyin, wo3 shi4 zhong1 guo2 ren2 means "I am Chinese" then they compare the pinyin with written characters, they should be able to create: 我是中国人. Maybe they won't get it exactly right on the first try, but chances are they will.

This document is to give the 500 common characters in Chinese, not teach all the possible combinations (I haven't seen that in any wordlist in any language). Since I added the pinyin to the characters, the student learning Chinese should be able to learn to read the characters. And thus with a little more effort, be able to find and understand what they are reading.

[zh-laoshi]

blindly memorising single characters won't necessarily improve your reading abilities

It depends, aren't you learning to read the characters?

Let's say a student is able to speak Chinese, read pinyin, etc. and do so very well. If he wants to learn how to read the characters, he does so by learning one character at a time. Then at a later time, the compunds will come in.

Also, learning comes by reading. If that same student can say (or read in pinyin): "ta1 ye3 bu2 shi4 lao3shi1" and learned the pronunciations of these characters 不 老 是 师 他 也. Then they should get the point when they encounter the following sentence: 他也不是老师. it's easy to realize the lao3shi1 is 老师.

Here's an example using Japanese. If you knew that "kugen" meant outspoken advice/bitter counsel, and you learned these characters: 苦 (ON reading = ke, KUN reading = ku) and then 言 (ON reading = gen/gon KUN reading = i), then you'd understand that 苦言 is kugen when you see it written. For more on Japanese ON and KUN readings, there are books and resources on the Internet to clear them up.

In English, you know what the words morning and good mean. So how did you learn the phrase "Good morning"?

Learning a language does take a little determination and effort, and guesswork is involved at certain points. Making mistakes is a part of learning, you can't always learn perfectly the first time.

[kokleong]

I for one am not disagreeing. Memorising characters is part of the equation. And as an adult, it's the one advantage we have over the way children learn as we have the vocabulary of another language to back us up.

It's because of my interest that I've memorised as much as I have (last I checked > 2000). But then I noticed my aforementioned weakness. I'm now rectifying this by going back to my tutorial books.

So, to those threading the same path as I am: go ahead and memorise but do look up dictionaries and be familiar with the compound words and phrases and do keep up with the other aspects of learning the language.

[geek_frappa]

how does your list compare to this list?

http://www.zhongwen.com/x/tsai1.htm

how is frequencty determined? is there a standard?

these lists are a good test to make sure i stay fresh. thanks a lot for providing links to them...

[zh-laoshi]

how does your list compare to this list?

This is the list I used. I just put it in alphabetical (by pinyin) order.

[Hann]

By following thru the lists i came to this webapge, and the following info which might be helpful to all.

http://residence.educities.edu.tw/wei3128/currinstruc/wordclause/generwordgrd9.htm

"This common used Chinese Character Sets are designed based on the following six considerations:

1. Understandable by Children

2. Reading materials in similar level / difficulty

3. Reading materials for adult readers

4. The need to get help by using dictionary while reading the text

5. School text books

6. Result of children's writing comprehensive

We collect the statistic and use frequency to put down the order, and then we categorized them into nine different classes. The smaller number of class represents higher usage. Higher usage means it will be frequently used. Learn the higher used characters early help the children's learning better.

* The first 600 characters will cover the appearing frequency in the text about 80%

* The first 1000 characters will cover the appearing frequency in the text about 90%

* The first 1500 characters will cover the appearing frequency in the text about 95%

Also, is there a downloads section on this forum or is it just scattered throughout?