Most Common Chinese Characters List

It’s often the most challenging part for Chinese learners that is mastering the Chinese characters. No matter its formation or memorizing methods, they are all different from other languages. Don’t be frustrated! As one of the most ancient and long-live characters system, Chinese characters have their combination logic. Only if you understand it, Chinese characters can be much more accessible. One of the most practical toolkits is analyzing each character as if you are playing the Lego game. Chinese characters are a combination of various character components. One of the key components is called Chinese radical, which is used to index Chinese characters. The radicals often indicate certain meanings of the characters. Therefore, it’s an efficient method to learn and memorize Chinese characters by radicals. Here is the daily used Chinese Characters List, which is categorized by frequently used radicals. You can also feel free to download both simplified and traditional Chinese characters list PDF versions.

“mouth” Radical: 口

“speech” Radical: 讠

“walk” Radical: 辶

“Ice” Radical: 冫

“Water” Radical: 氵

“Water” Radical: 灬

“Wood” Radical: 木

“Hand” Radical: 扌

“Grass” Radical: 艹

“Person” Radical: 亻

“double person” Radical: 彳

“Female” Radical: 女

“Insect” Radical: 虫

“Earth” Radical: 土

“Fire” Radical: 火

“Heart” Radical: 忄

“Heart” Radical: 心

“Bamboo” Radical: ⺮

“Sun” Radical: 日

“Eye” Radical: 目

“Meat” Radical: 月

“Mountain” Radical: 山

“Ear” Radical: 阝

“Iron” Radical: 钅

“Animal” Radical: 犭

“Top” Radical: 穴

“Bow” Radical: 弓

It’s always a big shock for the learners who know that there are more than 85,568 Chinese characters in the world for the first time. Don’t give up immediately. According to the official research of China Education Committee, there are only 3500 commonly used modern Chinese characters, which cover about 99.48% words and characters that you could read in daily life. And you can read around 97.97% of modern everyday Chinese if you know about 2500 characters out of the 3500 characters. To make your study more convenient, we provide you the 3500 commonly used Chinese characters list as following.