4. Do I need to learn all the Chinese characters?

>> Aha!! Very good question. Chinese is one of the oldest written languages in the world with roughly 3500 years of history. It’s hard to define the numbers BUT if you want to be amazed, once in the Great Compendium of Chinese Characters recorded 54,678 existing characters. Yet, only 3,000- 4,000 or so are necessary to read a newspaper. Even, I would say to know about 1000 characters would make you live in those countries mentioned in Question 3. After all, language is a tool served to communicate, to respect, and to make friends. What do you say?

>> If let’s say, you spend 1 hour each day on this website, and you are not mocking around which means you do concentrate on every second we have, I would say that you could learn 250-300 characters in 6 months. This allows you to attend HSK (Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì) translated as Chinese Proficiency Test, or Chinese Standard Exam and pass maybe Level 1 or 2 (150-300 vocabulary needed). After a certain level, there’s another exam named TOCFL (Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language) for you to challenge too.