汉字山：How many Chinese characters do you know?

[iknowcss]

I was a little surprised to see the font size was too big for some people. On most projects I hear the opposite! I've decreased the size from 10em to 8em. 

[Lu]

2960 +/- 370. I had hoped for better. This is why I usually don't like taking such tests ? It's all the obscure animals and ancient ritual words that tripped me up in this case, I guess it's my lack of chengyu knowledge showing?

 

@iknowcss, I saw a glitch: if the pinyin in a definition starts with a capital (Sòng), the capital disappears so you only see  òng. Using Firefox and Windows 10.

 

On the English test I did pretty well though! 83%, 0% nonwords. I would have scored even better if I had been less circumspect. I do know 'summate' in context, 'ribonuclease' I wouldn't flag as nonword in context and 'ok' I only marked as no because it is supposed to be in capitals, OK?

[imron]

51 minutes ago, iknowcss said:

On most projects I hear the opposite!

On many projects it's probably true!  Often what happens is that the Chinese font size is just kept exactly the same as the English font size.

 

For comfortable reading (especially on a screen), I find that Chinese needs to be a couple of point sizes larger, especially if it's Traditional characters.

 

The font size you were using however took up a full screen (on a mobile device) which is far larger than it needs to be.

[jeremyj99]

I got 980 +- 140. Not bad for a year of study, but I need to step it up! I wonder how many words I know. 

[murrayjames]

@jeremyj99, learning 1,000 characters in a year of study is very good. Congratulations. You probably don’t need to step it up. That could lead to burn out. Just keep doing what you are doing.

[jeremyj99]

@murrayjames Thanks! I'd love to get to ~2000 by the end of the year, but I've also kind of taken a step back and started spending more time actually reading graded readers to further develop my command of the characters.  

[iknowcss]

On 2/6/2019 at 7:04 PM, Lu said:

@iknowcss, I saw a glitch: if the pinyin in a definition starts with a capital (Sòng), the capital disappears so you only see  òng. Using Firefox and Windows 10.

 

Thanks for the bug report @Lu ? I pushed a fix for this yesterday.

[vanillalover1]

only 1o

[mkmyers45]

I got 2000+300 for simplified characters which sounds about right given that I am preparing to take the HSK 5. Im branching off to subject specific  vocabulary and I wonder if the test can still gauge my range at that time.

[Enjune Zhang]

Quite agree with imron. 

It is true that you need these basic 2000 characters frequently applied in daily written materials to get rid of illiteracy. But it will be more than characters after you reach that volume, but how you could make potential combinations of the characters to create meaning in the form of words. So learning character is a game of breeding the infinity out of limitation

 

 

[david387]

Nice test! I got 2100 on the first try and 2400 the second time. I'd love the option to login and have a history of previous tests.

[Pall]

Maybe it's interesting. HSK5 word list (inclusive HSK1-4) contains 1708 characters. 
As to the test, when is character supposed to be known, when its meaning is known or pinyin, or both? I think, remembering pinyin is the most valuable knowledge since it allows to type and to voice the characters. The meaning of words can rearly be derived from the meaning of the characters, only can be guessed to some extent.

[david387]

36 minutes ago, Pall said:

HSK5 word list (inclusive HSK1-4) contains 1708 characters. 

The meaningfulness of this to me now is simply that knowing most or all of those characters means that I am now prepared to read books and write messages. It's the beginning. 

 

Some words that I had to look up in the last couple of days that I did not know and are surely not on the hsk list are elliptical machine, drywall, and fiber optic cable.

椭圆机，石膏墙板，光线电缆

 

But the great thing now is that I don't have to constantly consult a dictionary or a translation app to communicate relatively clearly.