There are some 10,000 Chinese characters in common use. Basic literacy, according to the Chinese government, starts at two thousand characters. A solid grasp of a daily Beijing newspaper requires ...

According to the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service Institute, Chinese is a Class III language—the most difficult to master—and requires 2,200 hours of rigorous study to gain general ...

Mandarin Chinese is the most common language in the world, estimated to be spoken by more than 1.2 billion people in countries like China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia. With so many ...

She explains that a scholar of the Chinese language will master 20,000 characters, but you only need around 1,000 for basic literacy. "What is most intriguing is that if you can learn just the top ...

DeFrancis cites the "increasing vernacularisation of the Chinese writing style" as a potential factor in the death of characters. Academic and literary Chinese are dense forms of the language ...

Entrepreneur ShaoLan Hsueh wants to change that with Chineasy: A New Way To Read Chinese. In the book, just out from Harper Design, renowned illustrator Noma Bar reimagined Chinese characters as ...