Chinese characters are morphemes, and the total number is large. How many characters are there in Chinese characters? So far, I'm afraid no one can answer the exact figures. With regard to the number of Chinese characters, according to the records of ancient dictionaries, we can see their development.
There are 3,300 words in Cang Xie, erudition and calendar in Qin Dynasty, 5,340 words in Xun Bian written by Yang Xiong in Han Dynasty, and 9,353 words in Shuo Wen Jie Zi written in Xu Shen. After Jin and Song Dynasties, the characters became more and more complicated. According to the seal cutting performance of Moon Hee in Tang Dynasty, Jin wrote 12824, Wei Yang Chengqing wrote Zitong 13734 and Gu Liang wrote 169 17. Jade Piece is a supplement to Sun Qiang in Tang Dynasty, with 225,665,438+0 words. In Song Dynasty, there were as many as 3 1 and 3 19 words in Lei Pian by Sima Guangxiu, and in Qing Dynasty, there were more than 47,000 words in Kangxi Dictionary. 19 15 The Chinese Dictionary written by Ouyang Bocun and others has more than 48,000 words. 1959 The Yamato Dictionary compiled by various bridges in Japan has 49,964 words. The Chinese Dictionary edited by Zhang Qiyun in 197 1 has 49,888 words.
As time goes by, more and more words are included in the dictionary. 1990 The Chinese Dictionary edited by Xu Zhongshu has 54,678 words. 1994 The Sea of Chinese Characters by Leng Yulong et al. The number of words received is even more amazing, reaching as many as 85,000 words.
If learning and using Chinese characters really need to master the sounds, shapes and meanings of 70,000 to 80,000 Chinese characters, then Chinese characters will be the characters that no one in the world can and will not learn and use. Fortunately, most of the Chinese characters included in Chinese character books are "dead characters", that is, words that have existed in history and are abandoned in today's written language.
Someone has counted thirteen classics (13 classics such as Yijing, Shangshu, Zuo Zhuan, Gongyang Zhuan, Analects of Confucius, Mencius, etc. ), the total number of words is 589,283, of which 6,544 are different words. Therefore, in fact, people only use six or seven thousand Chinese characters in their daily lives.
Another way of saying it is:
Chinese characters have developed from ancient hieroglyphics to today's Chinese characters, and have undergone many changes and reforms; However, almost all the reforms in the past dynasties were eclectic, resulting in more and more Chinese characters. At present, the number of Chinese characters is amazing. The commonly used Xinhua dictionary has more than 10000 Chinese characters. Ci Hai published by 1990 has 14872 Chinese characters; Kangxi Dictionary compiled by 17 16 has 47035 Chinese characters; Guo Moruo once estimated by Japanese friends that there are about 60,000 Chinese characters in China. The Sea of Chinese Characters published by 1994 has 870 19 Chinese characters (including 320 repeated words); Recently, according to the Chinese character database published by Beijing Guoan Information Equipment Company, * * received 9 125 1 Chinese characters with sources. Among them, 2 1.303 Chinese characters are applicable at the first level, including Chinese characters proposed by national standards, 6,699 Chinese characters with China ancient and modern surnames of 1.200, and current rural first-class place names; There are 365,865,438+0 secondary applicable Chinese characters, including Chinese characters with complete sound and meaning in authoritative dictionaries of ancient and modern times, and Chinese characters used in ancient books such as Thirteen Classics and Twenty-four History. There are 33,367 third-level spare Chinese characters, including uncommon characters, abnormal characters and unclear sounds and meanings. Excluding miscellaneous books, unofficial history local chronicles, celebrity notes and other homemade Chinese characters; There are also variants and synonyms with different writing methods, such as orthography, cursive script, official script and seal script. There are 147 other words in Shuo Wen Jie Zi. It is estimated that the actual number of Chinese characters is about 65,438+10,000; It is also estimated that there are more than 120000; How many Chinese characters there are in China is still inconclusive.