Chinese characters are morpheme characters, and the total number is very large. How many Chinese characters are there in total? So far, I'm afraid no one can answer the precise number.
As for the number of Chinese characters, its development can be seen based on records in ancient calligraphy books and Ci books.
The three chapters of "Cangjie", "Boxue" and "Yanli" in the Qin Dynasty have 3300 words each. The "Exuns and Compilations" written by Yang Xiong in the Han Dynasty has 5340 words. By the time Xu Shen wrote "Shuowen" "Jiezi" has 9353 characters. After the Jin and Song Dynasties, the number of characters became increasingly complex. According to the Tang Dynasty Feng Yan's "Wen Jian Ji·Zi Zi Pian", Jin Lu Chen wrote "Zi Lin" with 12,824 words, Yang Chengqing of the later Wei Dynasty wrote "Zi Tong" with 13,734 words, and Liang Guye Wang wrote "Yu Pian" There are 16917 words. "Yupian" written by Sun Qiangzeng of the Tang Dynasty has 22,561 words. By the Song Dynasty, Sima Guang's "Lei Pian" had 31,319 words, and by the Qing Dynasty, the "Kangxi Dictionary" had more than 47,000 words. The "Chinese Dictionary" written by Ouyang Bocun and others in 1915 has more than 48,000 words. In 1959, Japan's "Dahanwa Dictionary" by Morohashi Tetsuji contained 49,964 characters. The "Chinese Dictionary" edited by Zhang Qiyun in 1971 has 49,888 words.
With the passage of time, the number of words in dictionaries is increasing. The "Chinese Dictionary" edited by Xu Zhongshu in 1990 contained 54,678 words. In 1994, "Chinese Character Ocean" by Leng Yulong and others contained an astonishing number of words, as many as 85,000 words.
If learning and using Chinese characters really requires mastering the pronunciation, shape, and meaning of 70,000 to 80,000 Chinese characters, then Chinese characters will be a language that no one in the world can and no one is willing to learn and use. Fortunately, most of the Chinese characters included in calligraphy books such as "Chinese Character Ocean" are "dead characters", that is, characters that existed in history but are no longer used in today's written language.
Some people have counted the Thirteen Classics (13 classics such as "Book of Changes", "Shang Shu", "Zuo Zhuan", "Gongyang Zhuan", "The Analects of Confucius", and "Mencius"), and the total number of words is There are 589283 words, of which the number of different single words is 6544. Therefore, in fact, there are only six to seven thousand Chinese characters used by people in daily life. How many idioms are there in Chinese? The "Chinese Idiom Dictionary" contains more than 22,000 items (including some idioms with different words but the same meaning), which is huge in scale. The sources of idioms can be roughly divided into three categories: one is idioms that are inherited from generation to generation and established by convention. For example, in order to mean that you will keep your word and will not change or regret it, the idiom is "a word is settled". The second type of source comes from the writings of predecessors and is quoted by later generations to form fixed phrases. For example, if the meaning is similar to the above, we can also use another idiom - "it must not be easy", which comes from "Huainanzi Zhushu Xun": "Now I weigh the rules, it must not be easy, I will not betray Qin and Chu, and I will not do it for Qin and Chu." Hu Yue changed his appearance." The third type of source comes from historical allusions. For example, if the above meaning is still the same, if it is replaced by another idiom - "One word, nine tripods", the story will have a deeper meaning. The story comes from the fifteenth year of King Zhao of Qin. When Qin besieged Handan, the capital of Zhao, Zhao sent Lord Pingyuan to Chu to ask for help. His retainer Mao Sui volunteered to go with him (the idiom "Mao Sui recommended himself" also comes from this). After Mao Sui arrived in the Chu Kingdom, he showed his interests to the King of Chu. After many twists and turns, the King of Chu agreed to save Zhao. Lord Pingyuan praised him and said: "As soon as Mr. Mao arrived in Chu, he made Zhao more important than Jiuding Dalu." (See "Historical Records? Biography of Lord Pingyuan". Jiuding Dalu is a treasure of the ancient country.) Later, it had a great influence on Ke. The words are called "One Word Nine Cauldrons".
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