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Can you read classical Chinese? Do you know all 50,000 characters?

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24 Answers

June Yu, lives in China

Updated October 1, 2018 · Author has 1.3K answers and 1.1M answer views

These are two very different questions. Classical Chinese is a language, it can be written in either
traditional Chinese character fonts or any modern Chinese standard character font.

The first versions of the Analects of Confucius were written in seal characters. Nobody uses seal
characters in daily life now. All the versions printed today are printed with one of the modern standard
Chinese character fonts. Nobody learns the Analects by its original written font:
Modern versions of the Analects are like this:
or this:
In Ming Dynasty (1400 A.D.) it was like this:
In modern Japan it is like this:
The fact is: you don’t need to know a specific Chinese language to understand Classical Chinese. Almost
all modern Chinese standards provide solutions to be compatible with Classical Chinese. You learn your
choice of modern standard Chinese and you can learn to read Classical Chinese.

The second question is about the amount of Chinese characters you master. I think the asker wants to
know if one needs to know many characters to read Classical Chinese.
The answer is yes and no. You need to know the common characters for sure. But is it the more the better?
Not really.

I think nowadays nobody can claim that he knows all the characters in Chinese Classical works, not even
just the Twenty-Four Histories, not even just the Zizhi Tongjian. To understand this, you need to know the
composition of the Chinese characters.

The Chinese characters roughly consist of 4 kinds of characters. The first one is the set of common
characters like 日, 月, 山, 川, etc. They are used in everyday life and common writings. It is believed that in
most of the time in Chinese history from the Warring States, educated people used not more than 4,000–
5,000 characters to communicate and express their thoughts. If we count the union of these characters
over time, it is roughly of the size of 6,000. So if you know these 6,000 characters, it’s enough for you to
read most Classical Chinese works and understand 80–90% of what they are talking about.

The second one is a set of uncommon words that are either very specific or just used in a rather short
period. For example, 骍 means reddish brown horse, 骝 means reddish brown horse with black mane and a
black tail, 枃 is an apparatus used by the Song workers to comb the filaments of silk. 椐 is a kind of tree
that looks like bamboo and were often used to make walking sticks, 馌 is to send lunch to the peasants
working in the field, etc.. Many of these characters are used to describe the specific name of animals,
plants, utensils, verbs, etc. in the old time, and people today either use other names or don’t use the thing
they refer to anymore. There are probably 15,000–20,000 characters like this.

The third one is about the variant of the characters. Most of the rare characters are of this category. In the
old time, there wasn’t a standard for the Chinese characters. People used different ways to write a
character and some of them were later accepted as orthodox, while the others were regarded as “non
standard”. Some were considered as errors and others were considered as variants. Most Chinese
characters have variants and most rare characters you can find in classical Chinese works are actually the
variant of another character. The variant characters basically double if not triple the number of Chinese
characters.

The last one is people’s name. Many people created their own character to name their children. You can’t
stop people doing this. It is only after we enter the digital time that Chinese people stop inventing new
characters for their children. I believe there are thousands if not more of this kind of characters.

So you see: 4 categories.

1. Common characters, around 6,000

2. Specific characters, 15,000–20,000

3. Variants, around 30,000–45,000

4. Invented for names, around 8,000–10,000

This is probably the making of the Chinese characters that have ever been written in the book (around
80,000 ?). You only need to

1. learn the 6,000 common ones and

2. buy a dictionary to check for the 2nd category

and it’s enough for you to travel in Chinese Classical works!

UPDATE:

One thing I forget: The meaning of characters have changed over time, especially the common ones. So, if
you are reading very ancient works, you need to learn the “old meanings” of the common characters. For
example, 走 means “to walk” today but “to run” or “to flee” in the old days!

Let’s take some examples to check what you need as “extra characters” to read Classical Chinese works:

1, All men are brothers (水浒传):

话说二十个泼皮破落户中间有两个为头的：一个叫做过街老鼠张三，一个叫做青草蛇李四。这两个为头接
将来。智深也却好去粪窖边，看见这伙人都不走动，只立在窖边，齐道：“俺特来与和尚作庆。”智深道：“你
们既是邻舍街坊，都来廨宇里坐地。”张三，李四，便拜在地上不肯起来；只指望和尚来扶他，便要动手。智
深见了，心里早疑忌，道：“这伙人不三不四，又不肯近前来，莫不要颠洒家？．．．那厮却是倒来捋虎须！
俺且走向前去，教那厮看洒家手脚！”

This is a popular novel so it’s quite easy. There are only 2 “difficult” characters: 廨 and 捋. You look them up
in the dictionary: 廨 means the government office in the old time. 廨宇 means the rooms in the government
office. 捋 is a specific verb that means caressing along a long object like an arm or one’s bear. 捋虎须 is
still used today. It is literally “caressing the tiger’s bear”, which means “seeking trouble with someone
tough”.

2, Zizhi Tongjian (资治通鉴)

先是，遼東城長史為部下所殺，其省事奉其妻子奔白巖。上憐其有義，賜帛五匹，為長史造靈輿，歸之平
壤。以白巖城為巖州，以孫代音為刺史。契苾何力瘡重，上自為傅藥，推求得刺何力者高突勃，付何力使自
殺之。何力奏稱：「彼為其主冒白刃刺臣，乃忠勇之士也，與之初不相識，非有怨仇。」遂捨之。

初，莫離支遣加屍城七百人戍蓋牟城，李世勣盡虜之，其人請從軍自效。上曰：「汝家皆在加屍，汝為我戰，
莫離支必殺汝妻子。得一人之力而滅一家，吾不忍也。」戊戌，皆廩賜遣之。

This is hard enough. This kind of books is what you read when do researches in Classic Chinese. But what
do you need as knowledge of characters? Not really much more from the 6,000 modrn common ones.
Maybe the 勣 in 李世勣 and the 苾 in 契苾何力, which is the name of a Turk (so…). The 廩 might be difficult
for some people. It’s the government’s barn.

3, The Book of Songs (诗经)

載芟載柞，其耕澤澤。千耦其耘，徂隰徂畛。

侯主侯伯，侯亞侯旅，侯彊侯以。

有嗿其饁，思媚其婦，有依其士。

有略其耜，俶載南畝，播厥百穀，實函斯活。

驛驛其達，有厭其傑。厭厭其苗，緜緜其麃。

載穫濟濟，有實其積，萬億及秭。
 為酒為醴，烝畀祖妣，以洽百禮，有飶其香，邦家之光。

有椒其馨，胡考之寧。匪且有且，匪今斯今，振古如茲。

This is super hardcore Classic. This text was about 2800 years from now and it was the ode the King of
Zhou sang in the shrine when the autumn harvest work was done. If you can read this without much need
of a dictionary I have to thumb up for you. Many characters in this text are in the 2nd catagory, like 芟, 柞,
耦, 徂, 隰, 畛, 嗿, 饁, etc. They are all very specific words and are not used today. You need to heavily rely on
your dictionary. But if you are already in this phase, I should say I need to learn more from you now!
7.2K views · View 118 Upvoters · View Sharers

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Other Answers

Mo Chen, knows Mandarin Chinese

Updated September 11, 2019 · Author has 489 answers and 4.9M answer views
Originally Answered: Can you read classical Chinese? Do you know all the 50,000 characters?
Can you read classical Chinese?

You can almost see Classical Chinese as a different language from Modern Chinese. Even for native
speakers, it demands years if not decades of training to decipher it effortlessly.

Here is a website I like to use for Classical Chinese:

https://www.gushiwen.org/
This is a typical ancient verse. Notice the highlight button? It means “Translate” in Chinese. Click on it and:

It translates this verse to modern Chinese.

Same for Classical Books:

But remember: Classical Chinese is not a flawed language, it is a mature lingual system that stands
perfectly on itself. If the reader is well trained enough, it doesn’t need translation to be understood. That is
why I claimed that Classical Chinese is essentially “a different language”.

So, if you are a Mandarin Learner, and someone show you a Classical Chinese and you find it hard to
understand, don’t worry about it. It’s normal. Just remember: most of the native speakers will face the
same problems, too.

So, can I read Classical Chinese? I’d say, I can understand it 90%, but with some help and search, I will have
no problem.

Keep in mind, that “Classical Chinese” does not mean “Chinese language spoken in Ancient times”. If you
look at the famous Four Classic Novels (Journey to the west, Dream of the Red Mansion, Romance of the
Three Kingdoms, Water Margin), you’ll find the language staggeringly similar to Modern Chinese. This is
because they are written in 白话文, or Conversational Chinese.

Therefore, in Ancient times, two Chinese Languages coexist: Classical Chinese, used in official records,
announcements, diplomatic decrees, statistics, documentations because of the extreme conciseness; and
Conversational Chinese, used in colloquial conversations and popular novels.

In other words, “Classical Chinese” was considered to be “Classical” even in 1385 China. Conversational
Chinese is evolved from how people talk in primitive China, and Classical Chinese is evolved from how
people write in primitive China. Because it’s cumbersome to etch characters onto bronze, stones, or turtle
shells, primitive Chinese wrote extremely concisely.

To put you into perspective: Conversational Chinese is Classical Chinese in a expanded, relaxed, colloquial
form.

Alternatively:

Classical Chinese is so hard, you need Conversational Chinese to translate it first.

And you think the HSK is difficult? Be grateful.

 Do you know all the 50,000 characters?

Regarding the daunting 50k character set. Do I know it all?

No, of course not. Here is how many characters I know:

http://hanzi.sjz.io/

I recognize a little more than 1/10 of that. Wow, that seemed to be inadequate.

Does it hinder my ability to use the Chinese language, or even, make me a Chinese illiterate?

No. I’m actually just average for a native speaker.

For non-Mandarin natives, I will demonstrate that the idea of “Chinese language has 50k character set” is a
myth.

I have written a simple code to count the number of unique character occurrence in any given UTF-8 text
files.

1 using System; 
2 using System.Collections.Generic; 
3 using System.Linq; 
4 using System.Text; 
5 using System.Threading.Tasks; 
6 using System.IO; 

7  
8 namespace Count_Char 
9 {
9 { 
10 class Program 
11 { 
12 static void Main(string[] args) 
13 { 
14 string dir1 = @"C:\wkspace\pshell\丰乳肥臀UTF-8.txt"; 
15 string dir2 = @"C:\wkspace\pshell\丰乳肥臀UTF-
8_staticstics.csv"; 
16 string art1 = File.ReadAllText(dir1); 
17 string str_unichar; 
18 string out1; 
19 int oc_chr; 
20 int count_total = art1.Count(); 
21 StringBuilder sb_unichar = new StringBuilder(); 
22 StringBuilder sb_out1 = new StringBuilder(); 
23  
24 art1 = art1.Replace("\r\n", "").Replace("，", "").Replace(" ",
""); 
25 art1 = art1.Replace("。", "").Replace(" ", "").Replace("：",
""); 
26 art1 = art1.Replace("“", "").Replace("”", "").Replace("！",
""); 
27 art1 = art1.Replace("；", "").Replace("？", "").Replace("\"",
""); 
28 art1 = art1.Replace("、", ""); 
29 //Console.Write("Total character is: {0} \t", art1.Count()); 
30 foreach (char chr1 in art1) 
31 { 
32 str_unichar = sb_unichar.ToString(); 
33 if (!str_unichar.Contains(chr1)) 
34 sb_unichar.Append(chr1); 
35 } 
36  
37 str_unichar = sb_unichar.ToString(); 
38 //Console.WriteLine("Unique character is: {0}",
str_unichar.Count()); 
39 out1 = "\'{0}\',{1}\r\n"; 
40 sb_out1.Append("character,occurence\r\n"); 
41 foreach (char chr1 in str_unichar) 
42 {
 42 { 
43 oc_chr = art1.Count(x => x == chr1); 
44 //Console.WriteLine("\'{0}\',{1}", chr1, oc_chr); 
45  
46 sb_out1.Append(string.Format(out1, chr1, oc_chr)); 
47 } 
48  
49 File.WriteAllText(dir2, sb_out1.ToString()); 
50 Console.WriteLine("Completed. Press any key."); 
51 Console.Read(); 
52 } 
53 } 
54 } 

I’ll first use this to analyze an article I wrote some time ago.

首次买车是种怎样的体验？ - 知乎

And here are the results:

Here is the top 20 characters used:

Then the least characters used, last 20:

And then there is the statistics graph of occurrence distribution:

As you can see, most of the 761 unique characters are skewed to the 0-14 occurrence bracket. So, lets
zoom and see what happens there:

As you can see, only half of the characters appeared once.

Not bad, but you might think the sample size is a little small. let’s move on to something more exciting.
Let’s try this, Classical Novel – Water Margin:

So here are the results:

Top occurence 20 vs. buttom 20:

Here is another analysis on 金瓶梅, The Plum in the Golden Vase.
That’s enough for the classical novels, let’s throw in some modern novels, here is Nobel Prize Winner Mo
Yan’s Novel 丰乳肥臀 Big Breasts & Wide Hips:
Are you noticing the pattern here? Besides the fact that you only need a measely 761 characters to
compose a coherent Chinese article like a native speaker?
The character used is not even close to 50k! It is even lower than the averaged Number of Character
known required for educated Chinese Native Speakers - 4,000 compared to 6,000!

Of course, looking at the characters appearing below 14 times, you might think, there are a lot of difficult
characters used only several times. I admit, even natives sometimes need to use a Chinese dictionary to
figure out an obscure character. But hey, English Natives use a dictionary, too. Don’t judge us.

Besides, look at the data: rare characters appear is not even that scary: It’s 1 to 3 per thousand characters!

Where does this “There are 50k Chinese characters” myth come from?

In 1710, There were some scholars sought to collect all the Chinese characters that ever existed in the
Chinese History. They made a dictionary called 《康熙字典》. In it, they collected 47,035 unique
characters. However, one thing to note, is that the majority of these characters are redundant, obsolete,
and even improvised (like how William Shakespeare sometimes invent his own English word).

But remember their mission: if a character so much as appeared even once in some obscure texts, they
will collect it; one Emperor made a typo or error in some writings and everyone was so afraid to correct it,
they will collect it.

And that is how you get 50k characters, which is the popular number for all the characters in Chinese
language; but actually, according to a Beijing IT company (北京国安咨讯设备公司), today there are 91,251
characters that ever existed in this world. (including simplified, traditional, Japanese-invented, Korean-
invented, Vietnamese-invented, etc.)

However, that number is not practically meaningful. Most of these characters today are eliminated or
assimilated by the new Mandarin standards.

In fact, the Chinese character requirement is surprisingly lenient:

If you know 1,000 most frequently used characters, you can read 92% of all Mandarin texts that ever
existed;

If you know 2,000, 98% of all Mandarin texts;

If you know 3,000, 99% of all Mandarin texts.

The takeaway here:

1. It is recommended that you know 6,000 characters as a College graduate as a native speaker, but, you
can perfectly make do with 3,000. Remember, 99% is a lot.

2. The “Chinese language has a 50k Character Set” is a popular misunderstanding. Realistically, the
character set used is far below this number.

3. Do not let this myth ruin your Mandarin learning experience! Relax and have fun!
23.3K views · View 471 Upvoters · View Sharers

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Robert Maxwell, Chinese language student and enthusiast, interested in dialects and Song poetry
Answered June 25, 2018 · Author has 635 answers and 2.2M answer views
Originally Answered: Can you read classical Chinese? Do you know all the 50,000 characters?
No, I do not know all the characters, no matter if you count them as 50,000 or 30,000 or whatever. I
regularly come across characters I’ve never seen before. I’ve met one person who claimed to know all
50,000-some-odd characters, and I got the idea that it was mostly a literati party trick more than an actual,
practical thing.

Yes, I can read Classical Chinese—for a given definition of “read.” Can I read it effortlessly? No. Can I read
it without much pain with a bit of help from a note here and there or a glance at the dictionary from time to
time? Sure.

I’m not Chinese, so I got a bit of a late start at things. I started learning Chinese when I was an exchange
student in Hong Kong, but I really began learning Chinese in college, where the standard course was to do
three years of Chinese—I studied abroad in Shanghai junior year, so I think my university regarded me as
having four years’ worth—and then take Classical Chinese.

I took Classical Chinese with a wonderful, amazing teacher and translator by the name of Jonathan
Chaves. He was a bit eccentric and conservative (in a good way), so he had us learn Classical Chinese out
of an old textbook from… Stanford, I want to say? written by an academic named Shaddick.

I quite liked how that book was organized.

They were paperbacks in two volumes. The first volume had the Chinese texts. These books were so old
that they didn’t even have digital Chinese type, but rather were copied, handwritten characters
mimeographed (or something) into the book.

The second volume had the vocabulary lists. Again, these books were so old that they used Wade Giles
instead of Pinyin. Oh, and all the characters were in Traditional Chinese. That was fine for me, since I had
begun learning Chinese in Hong Kong (which uses Traditional), but most of my classmates had to
essentially relearn the traditional versions of the characters. And learn the Wade-Giles as well.
(Sorry, Professor Chaves, I still think you’re great, but I still hate Wade-Giles.)

I kinda liked this because you could either have the list open next to you for quick reference or you could
close it and put it away if you wanted to sort of drill yourself on the texts.

In addition, we had to pick up a Chinese-English dictionary of my professor’s choosing. I seldom use it

anymore, but, if memory serves, it was organized like a traditional Chinese dictionary (radical then stroke
number) with entries in, you guessed it, Wade-Giles romanization and then the English definition(s).

Every class, we’d get a new text to translate. We’d go home, translate it, and then go to the next class with
our translations. We’d go around the room, providing a fairly literal translation of each sentence. If the
sentences were too long, each student would get roughly a clause in that sentence. Then Professor
Chaves would comment on it for us. If we couldn’t figure out what on earth was going on, that was fine, the
professor would help us there so long as he figured we gave it a college try. There were a number of places
that just left us stumped, but no biggie.

This class was two semesters long and took us roughly from 子以石擊烏 (“The son uses a rock to hit the
crow”) or something like that to Han Yu’s essay on how the Buddhists suck and Su Shi’s Prose Poem on
Red Cliff (赤壁賦).

I took the option to take a class on Tang and Song Poetry in the second semester, parallel to my second
semester of Classical Chinese. This was also taught by Chaves and he made an effort to teach it at a
graduate level. It was an awesome class—much of the work we did was on reading and translating poems
copied from old, handwritten documents. So we had a few poems we’d have to read that were out of a Liao
Dynasty (I think) collection of Tang Poems that we’d have to mark up and punctuate and all that—and, from
time to time, figure out what they meant by that odd variant character.

After that, I continued reading on my own, picking up characters here and there, improving my Classical
Chinese (since that’s basically all I read). I attempted to go to graduate school in Chinese literature but, for
various reasons, that was a bust, though I might apply again some time in the future. I was at least lucky
enough to be living in Hong Kong after graduation, so it was easy to pick up Classical Chinese texts in
local bookstores. My favorite editions were (and still are) 三民書局 editions—the teal brocaded ones, if
you’ve ever seen them—since they generally come with good editorial notes.

Despite the fact that I have a decent amount of experience, I still don’t read Classical Chinese anywhere
near effortlessly.

I can read easy stuff well enough, and I’m fairly comfortable with Tang shi and Song ci. I could probably get
you in the ballpark without editorial notes if you put a gun to my head—unless, of course, the poet decided
to be super obscure with his poetry, in which case I’d be too busy going “What the fuck are you talking
about?” to notice the bullet in my skull and my brains all over the wall. Chances are, I’d still be trying to
figure out what the hell was going on right up to the point where the rest of my body figures out that I no
longer have a functioning brain stem.

On the other hand, if you put the 尚書 in front of me and told me to read it, I’d probably start crying and tell
you to get it over with. I’d rather die.

In general though, even normal Chinese need editorial notes to fully grasp the nuances. Pretty much every
single one of my copies of Classical Chinese texts (which are aimed at native Chinese speakers) comes
with these notes, which explain various references (sometimes highly obscure) and note whether the
author actually meant some sort of homophone or whatever. Sometimes, if a sentence is really weird, the
editorial note will just give you a quick gloss of what they mean.

I’ll also note that one of the difficulties of Classical Chinese (or Literary Chinese) is that it isn’t quite how
many characters you know, but the fact that even common characters can have weird usages that you’ll
seldom see, but suddenly pop up. Even common characters can have very different meanings. As a very
basic example, take 道—it’s a common character, and a learner will generally know it means “way” or
“path,” but it also means “to say” or “to state.” It’s a 101 example, and both meanings are very common, but
it illustrates that even common characters you definitely know will still have surprises. And then there’s the
fact that many words in Chinese can seamlessly shift between being verbs, nouns, adjectives, and so on.

So, all in all, I’m not too put out. I do what I can, and I’m happy to learn.

As to how many characters I know, I’ll borrow some of the tests used by the other responders:
Personally, I’ll take it. I earned them characters with sweat, blood, and tears.
5.9K views · View 68 Upvoters

Han Ke, B.A. from Southeast University (2018)

Answered March 12, 2019

For the first question, absolutely yes. Most Chinese students can read some simple classic Chinese in
simplified Chinese, and some of them who are interested in it can read in traditional Chinese, and can read
some articles without explanation. Most students major in Chinese language and literature can read quite
much of them which were written from about 500 BC to 1919 AD ( After 1919 AD, classic Chinese was no
longer used as a formal language nor academic language but only for literature. ) Until now, some guys
can even write essay in this died language.

For the second question, no. If you're not the specialists who wrote dictionaries about characters, you can't
be possible to know every characters. In fact, the total number of Chinese characters can be larger than
50000. One Chinese dictionary named Chinese characters sea or in Chinese 中華字海 contains more than
85000 characters. No one need to know them all, because the most used 1000 characters can cover 90%
ordinary books. The most used 2500 characters can cover 97.97% ordinary books, and for 3500 characters
this number would be 99.48% .

If you want to read Confucius's Analects, although it contains 15920 characters in total, there are only 1351
kinds of characters. For the book Mencius, it have 35258 in total but 1886 kinds. So you don't need to know
every character. Know the most used 2000 or 3000, and search the rest when you encounter them.
459 views · View 1 Upvoter

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Kent Zhang, knows Mandarin Chinese

Answered August 11, 2018

It is basically impossible to learn all 50k chinese characters because:

1. There just isn’t enough time to learn due to the time devoted to your job.

2. Schools would only teach the commonly used words (roughly 1.75 k) and maybe 1000 more if the
school chooses to teach more than they usually would.

3. Just the difference of a single stroke could result in a totally different word with a different meaning,
which means that you need to be able to clearly differentiate between characters.

4. Besides being able to identify the characters, you need

Continue to learn the definition of each word, and a lot of
Reading
Chi

Weix Hee, knows Chinese

Answered July 22, 2018

1.Yes I can read it.

The reason why me as a mainland Chinese can read traditional cahracters is:

a.The different form simplified characters and traditional type are actually not that large, most characters
are simpified by their handwriting forms that already exist thousands or at least hundreds year in folk
life,just like British “colour” turn to American “color”.

b.I had learn Chinese calligraphy long time ago, so I know the principle that we simplified characters,so
even there is a character I didn’t learn before ,I still can guess it out.
Continue Reading
c.I have read whole simplified characters summary table

Chen Zhigong (陳治功), knows Classical Chinese

Updated August 11, 2018 · Author has 321 answers and 1.6M answer views

1. “Can you read Classical Chinese?”

Yes of course, I can read and use it fluently, many Chinese can read Classical Chinese, and I think many of
them can use Classical Chinese characters, especially the calligraphy lovers.

2. “Do you know all 50000 characters?”

No, I don’t. According to the test “how many Chinese characters do you know”, I know about 9000
characters. (http://hanzi.sjz.io/#/words ,Link provided by Mo Chen)

Continue Reading

Victor Yeh, a native Chinese speaker, born in Fujian, China

Answered June 23, 2018 · Author has 510 answers and 787.5K answer views
Originally Answered: Can you read classical Chinese? Do you know all the 50,000 characters?
Can I read Classical Chinese (文言文)? Surely I can. Classical Chinese is a requirement for all the Chinese
students. We started to be taught Classical Chinese in the sixth year in primary school, such as 学弈 and
两小儿辩日 . Therefore, it is no wonder that we comprehend many Classical Chinese texts.

Unicode has recorded more than 80,000 Chinese characters , but a well-educated native Chinese
speaker actually recognizes about 5,000–7,000 Chinese characters. Nobody can recognize more than
10,000 Chinese characters, not to mention about 50,000
Continue as the Kangxi Dictionary has recorded or even
Reading
80,000 as Unicode

Daniel Zhang, A native Chinese

 Answered June 25, 2018 · Author has 199 answers and 182.7K answer views
Originally Answered: Can you read classical Chinese? Do you know all the 50,000 characters?
For the first question, it really depends. Generally, the more ancient the articles are, the harder it is to
understand them. An ordinary Chinese people usually have no problem reading texts that were written in
Qing Dynasty or maybe even late Ming Dynasty. But as the characters used then are still existed today but
just with different meanings from those used during ancient times, it is perfectly OK to read any classical
Chinese in theory as long as it is printed in regular script
Continue （现代印刷体）. I personally can read those
Reading
written not earlier than Han Dynasty. And one different thing in Chinese edu

Daniel Morse, knows Mandarin Chinese

Answered June 1 · Author has 833 answers and 384.2K answer views

Actually nobody knows 50,000 Chinese characters. I have compiled a database of the characters I am
confident I actually know. It contains 6,108. But, as everybody says, we foreign students of Chinese and
native Chinese alike use only a bit over 4,250 regularly. I still look up a character about once a month while
reading classical texts. I do refute the claim that 3,000 characters are enough to read most things. This
amount will limit the reader to easy-reading stories. It is a good base; but you will be looking things up
fairly often.
Continue Reading
As another person has answered, we all read classical texts

Krist Pan, knows Chinese

Answered June 25, 2018

Originally Answered: Can you read classical Chinese? Do you know all the 50,000 characters?
Question 1: Can you read classical Chinese?

It depends. Some of them are easy to read, some are difficult.

I can read it because classical Chinese is a very important part of our education, and also in Korea and
Japan, since classical Chinese was the common written language in East Asia. Classical Chinese to East
Asia is as Latin and Greek to Europe, but it is much easier for a Chinese to learn classical Chinese than a
westerner to learn Latin or Greek.

Chinese students begin to learn classical Chinese in primary

Continue Reading schools, mainly some classical poems
written in Tang and Song Dynasty(around 600–130
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