100 Most Common Chinese Characters
- From past to present, there is no accurate counting of Chinese characters. Depending upon how one counts variants, 50,000+ is a good approximation for the current total number.
- However, it is generally accepted that one needs to know between 2,000 to 3500 characters for basic literacy in Chinese (for example, to read a Chinese newspaper), and a well-educated person will know well in excess of 4,000 to 5,000 characters.
- There have been several attempt to identify the most frequently used Chinese characters. In 1988, the Chinese government has published a list of the 3,500 most frequently used Simplified Chinese characters : 现代汉语常用字表 (“List of Frequently Used Characters in Modern Chinese”).
- As you may notice, each daily character post found in this website includes the usage of the character. The usage/frequency that I used in this website is based on the statistic found in here : Frequency Statistics 频率统计
- To maximize the speed to achieve reading literacy, the student should learn the most commonly used characters first.
- According to a survey on the current situation of Chinese language, to understand 90% of the content in Chinese publications, students have to learn only about 900 Chinese characters and 11,000 phrases/words
- Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Most Chinese words are written with one or more characters; each character representing one syllable. Knowing the meanings of the individual characters of a word will often allow the general meaning of the word to be inferred, but this is not invariably the case.
- Here are the 100 most frequently used characters that we have learnt, making up around 40% of the usage of Chinese.
| Character | Usage | Pinyin | Pronunciation | Date/Link | |
| 1 | 的 | 95.9 | de |
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04-Sep-2009 |
| 2 | 一 | 94.3 | yī |
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11-Jul-2009 |
| 3 | 是 | 93.0 | shì |
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28-Jul-2009 |
| 4 | 不 | 91.8 | bù |
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08-May-2009 |
| 5 | 了 | 90.7 | le |
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30-Jun-2009 |
| 6 | 在 | 89.7 | zài |
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16-Sep-2009 |
| 7 | 人 | 88.7 | rén |
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29-Jun-2009 |
| 8 | 有 | 87.8 | yǒu |
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23-Feb-2010 |
| 9 | 我 | 86.9 | wǒ |
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21-May-2009 |
| 10 | 他 | 86.1 | tā |
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25-May-2009 |
| 11 | 这 | 85.3 | zhè |
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03-Aug-2009 |
| 12 | 个 | 84.7 | gè |
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31-Jul-2009 |
| 13 | 们 | 84.1 | men |
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29-May-2009 |
| 14 | 中 | 83.5 | zhōng |
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02-Nov-2009 |
| 15 | 来 | 82.9 | lái |
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05-Jun-2009 |
| 16 | 上 | 82.4 | shàng |
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12-May-2009 |
| 17 | 大 | 81.8 | dà |
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02-Sep-2009 |
| 18 | 为 | 81.3 | wèi |
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03-Nov-2009 |
| 19 | 和 | 80.8 | hé |
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04-Nov-2009 |
| 20 | 国 | 80.3 | guó |
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09-Nov-2009 |
| 21 | 地 | 79.8 | dì |
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20-Nov-2009 |
| 22 | 到 | 79.3 | dào |
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27-Nov-2009 |
| 23 | 以 | 78.8 | yǐ |
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09-Dec-2009 |
| 24 | 说 | 78.4 | shuō |
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05-Nov-2009 |
| 25 | 时 | 77.9 | shí |
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10-Nov-2009 |
| 26 | 要 | 77.5 | yào |
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30-Oct-2009 |
| 27 | 就 | 77.1 | jiù |
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18-Dec-2009 |
| 28 | 出 | 76.7 | chū |
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18-Sep-2009 |
| 29 | 会 | 76.3 | huì |
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11-Nov-2009 |
| 30 | 可 | 76.0 | kě |
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12-Nov-2009 |
| 31 | 也 | 75.6 | yě |
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03-Jun-2009 |
| 32 | 你 | 75.2 | nǐ |
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22-May-2009 |
| 33 | 对 | 74.9 | duì |
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13-Nov-2009 |
| 34 | 生 | 74.5 | shēng |
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30-Jul-2009 |
| 35 | 能 | 74.2 | néng |
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30-Nov-2009 |
| 36 | 而 | 73.8 | ér |
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07-Jan-2010 |
| 37 | 子 | 73.5 | zǐ |
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24-Feb-2010 |
| 38 | 那 | 73.2 | nà |
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04-Aug-2009 |
| 39 | 得 | 72.8 | dé |
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11-Dec-2009 |
| 40 | 于 | 72.5 | yú |
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08-Feb-2010 |
| 41 | 着 | 72.2 | zhe |
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01-Dec-2009 |
| 42 | 下 | 71.9 | xià |
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13-May-2009 |
| 43 | 自 | 71.6 | zì |
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26-Jan-2010 |
| 44 | 之 | 71.2 | zhī |
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20-Jan-2010 |
| 45 | 年 | 70.9 | nián |
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07-Sep-2009 |
| 46 | 过 | 70.6 | guò |
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19-Nov-2009 |
| 47 | 发 | 70.3 | fā |
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23-Nov-2009 |
| 48 | 后 | 70.0 | hòu |
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19-Jun-2009 |
| 49 | 作 | 69.8 | zuò |
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24-Jun-2009 |
| 50 | 里 | 69.5 | lǐ |
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09-Feb-2010 |
| 51 | 用 | 69.2 | yòng |
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25-Jan-2010 |
| 52 | 道 | 68.9 | dào |
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18-Feb-2010 |
| 53 | 行 | 68.7 | xíng |
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23-Oct-2009 |
| 54 | 所 | 68.4 | suǒ |
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15-Feb-2010 |
| 55 | 然 | 68.1 | rán |
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05-Feb-2010 |
| 56 | 家 | 67.9 | jiā |
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14-Aug-2009 |
| 57 | 种 | 67.6 | zhòng |
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11-Jan-2010 |
| 58 | 事 | 67.3 | shì |
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01-Feb-2010 |
| 59 | 成 | 67.1 | chéng |
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28-Jan-2010 |
| 60 | 方 | 66.8 | fāng |
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24-Nov-2009 |
| 61 | 多 | 66.6 | duō |
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17-Nov-2009 |
| 62 | 经 | 66.3 | jīng |
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10-Feb-2010 |
| 63 | 么 | 66.1 | me |
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23-Jul-2009 |
| 64 | 去 | 65.8 | qù |
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12-Aug-2009 |
| 65 | 法 | 65.5 | fǎ |
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10-Dec-2009 |
| 66 | 学 | 65.4 | xué |
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29-Jul-2009 |
| 67 | 如 | 65.1 | rú |
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12-Jan-2010 |
| 68 | 都 | 64.9 | dōu |
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04-Jun-2009 |
| 69 | 同 | 64.7 | tóng |
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16-Nov-2009 |
| 70 | 现 | 64.4 | xiàn |
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04-Jan-2010 |
| 71 | 当 | 64.2 | dāng |
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25-Feb-2010 |
| 72 | 没 | 64.0 | méi |
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22-Feb-2010 |
| 73 | 动 | 63.8 | dòng |
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07-Dec-2009 |
| 74 | 面 | 63.6 | miàn |
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17-Dec-2009 |
| 75 | 起 | 63.3 | qǐ |
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22-Jan-2010 |
| 76 | 看 | 63.1 | kàn |
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20-Aug-2009 |
| 77 | 定 | 62.9 | dìng |
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05-Jan-2010 |
| 78 | 天 | 62.7 | tiān |
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17-Jun-2009 |
| 79 | 分 | 62.5 | fēn |
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19-Jan-2010 |
| 80 | 还 | 62.3 | hái |
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06-Jan-2010 |
| 81 | 进 | 62.0 | jìn |
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17-Sep-2009 |
| 82 | 好 | 61.8 | hǎo |
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04-May-2009 |
| 83 | 小 | 61.6 | xiǎo |
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03-Sep-2009 |
| 84 | 部 | 61.4 | bù |
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12-Feb-2010 |
| 85 | 其 | 61.2 | qí |
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04-Dec-2009 |
| 86 | 些 | 61.0 | xiē |
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03-Feb-2010 |
| 87 | 主 | 60.8 | zhǔ |
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29-Jan-2010 |
| 88 | 样 | 60.6 | yàng |
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08-Jan-2010 |
| 89 | 理 | 60.4 | lǐ |
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27-Jan-2010 |
| 90 | 心 | 60.2 | xīn |
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26-Nov-2009 |
| 91 | 她 | 60.0 | tā |
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26-May-2009 |
| 92 | 本 | 59.8 | běn |
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08-Dec-2009 |
| 93 | 前 | 59.6 | qián |
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18-Jun-2009 |
| 94 | 开 | 59.4 | kāi |
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25-Nov-2009 |
| 95 | 但 | 59.2 | dàn |
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02-Dec-2009 |
| 96 | 因 | 59.0 | yīn |
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15-Jan-2010 |
| 97 | 只 | 58.8 | zhǐ |
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03-Dec-2009 |
| 98 | 从 | 58.6 | cóng |
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06-Nov-2009 |
| 99 | 想 | 58.4 | xiǎng |
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18-Aug-2009 |
| 100 | 实 | 58.2 | shí |
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14-Dec-2009 |
Loading ...
wheres the English …makes it useless without that
[Reply]
Min Min Reply:
April 29th, 2010 at 12:07 am
Hi rusty,
You have to click on the date link to go to the details page for the English meaning of each characters.
I will try to improve this page by adding a short English meaning for each characters.
Thanks for your suggestion. I hope you will enjoy learning Chinese.
[Reply]
Nice work, appreciate that.. By the way, we foreigners generally strugle against the words like ” 从” or ” 草 ” . The initial “c” which is followed by “o” “e” “a” is really hard to pronounce.
Could you please give some examples about that. Thanks in advance..
[Reply]
Min Min Reply:
May 10th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
Hi ömer,
Thanks.
I think you are learning Pinyin. Chinese pronunciation is different from English.
I am preparing a Pinyin ebook. I hope that would be useful for you.
Stay tuned and get updated. 谢谢。
[Reply]
Hallo Min Min..
im really2 happy when i found your website. I’ve try to search chinese-learning site for a year…this is great! Keep ur good job. I want to make request, can you please suggest or upload a chinese song video with pinyin and english meaning? Im so happy if u can do that…Thanks a lot.
[Reply]
Min Min Reply:
May 19th, 2010 at 9:59 pm
Hi Maey,
Thanks for visiting my website.
I have created a few Chinese children songs:
http://www.learnchineseeveryday.com/category/weekly-activities/chinese-songs/
All the songs here have Pinyin and English meaning.
I also included youtube videos for some of the songs. I hope this would be useful for you.
Thanks.
[Reply]
Hello Min Min,
I’m Sri Lankan girl. I have a friend in China. Some times when we talk he doesn’t know the meaning. It’s very difficult to us. So I thought to learn Chinese. Then I found this site. It’s very useful. Thank you very much. This is GREAT.
Most of the times I need simple sentence to talk with others in our daily work. I appreciate if you can arrange some thing helping for this purpose.
[Reply]
Min Min Reply:
May 21st, 2010 at 11:02 pm
Hi nishi,
Thanks. For simple sentences, have a look at the conversation sectioin in this site:
http://www.learnchineseeveryday.com/category/weekly-activities/conversation/
I hope it would be useful to you.
[Reply]