Colors

Are Chinese characters pictures?

Some of the Chinese characters are pictures of their words, like these:

Mountain - Shan

Person - Ren

Big - Da

Many of the characters are not pictures or words, but use parts of the character called radicals to help sound out the word.

How many characters are there?

Chinese has thousands of Chinese characters. The largest Chinese dictionaries have over 50,000 characters! Many of these characters are very rarely used. Around 1,000 to 2,000 characters will help you understand most of the commonly used Chinese in newspapers and speech. Starting with the basics will help you gain a solid foundation to learn more characters.