There is no unified statement about the total number of Chinese characters in China. There is an addendum at the back of Kangxi Dictionary, which is appraised as a masterpiece of Chinese characters. It says, "All rare words are attached, and there are meaningless or meaningless words", and the number of Chinese characters included is more than 40,000. 1994. The Chinese character library of Beijing Guoan Consulting Equipment Co., Ltd., which has been appraised by experts, has 9 125 1 Chinese characters with sources, and is said to be the most complete Chinese character library in China at present. In sharp contrast to the huge Chinese character library, the number of variant characters commonly used in daily written language in past dynasties is generally controlled at three or four thousand. The number does not exceed the original Chinese character Oracle Bone Inscriptions. The state announced on 1988.
Ji Hengquan, former deputy director of the Institute of Language and Character Application of the State Language Committee, believes that the total number of characters in a country has increased or decreased, but the number of basic characters is relatively fixed. There are many Chinese characters which can be divided into many levels. There are more than 2,500 commonly used Chinese characters in China. As long as you master them, you can read modern Chinese written language skillfully. The five-volume Selected Works of Mao Zedong uses no more than 2,000 Chinese characters. The Chinese syllabus for primary schools stipulates that students should know 3000 Chinese characters.
Ji Hengquan said that Chinese characters are the carrier of history and culture, conveying certain information, and their application characteristics are different in different social stages. With the development of society, some characters are gradually eliminated. From the perspective of modern Chinese, people need a simpler way to express their feelings. "There are 40,000 or even 90,000 Chinese characters. I'm afraid many people can't remember them all their lives. Even if you remember it, it is useless to understand it when communicating. "
With the development of society, language is developing in order to express new things. Behind 90,000 words is the continuous progress of social life. Because of the long history of China's characters, these characters constitute the main body of the Chinese character library, which is mainly reflected in the collections of Chinese characters compiled by the state, such as Shuowen Jiezi, Kangxi Dictionary, Chinese Dictionary and Chinese Characters Sea. This is impossible in the development of language itself. Just as Kong Yiji once insisted that there are four ways to write fennel, the variant characters in Chinese characters are an important reason for the growing family of Chinese characters. In 1950s, the state made a list of variant characters, but this work has not been completed. With the introduction of hanyu pinyin, this work has not been carried out to the end. Mr. Chao Jizhou, a professor in the Department of Language of the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, explained this.
According to Mr. Qinglong Liu, a researcher at the Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who participated in the compilation of Xinhua Dictionary and Modern Chinese Dictionary, collecting and sorting out such large fonts is not only for future reference, but also for printing Chinese characters, sorting out ancient books and studying abroad. It also provides a high-level font tool for making names and certificates and marking place names on the map of China. In the early 1990s, China made a font tool containing 2090.
The reasons for sorting out the Chinese character library are as follows: First, in order to meet the international requirements of establishing international characters, an international common character library is established to facilitate the exchange of international characters. At present, the International ISO National Standards Committee is collecting characters from various countries; The second is to adapt to the development of computer input method and expand computer fonts. At present, the Institute of Computer Standardization of the Ministry of Information Industry is also sorting out the Chinese characters, and nearly 70,000 characters have been sorted out. Thirdly, the font deformation in the development of Chinese characters makes some characters look different from Chinese characters and needs to be sorted out and unified.