As we all (should) know, 1500 is not enough characters for Chinese. Once RTH/RSH 2 comes out, the number will be 3000. But if you look at the lists of characters learned in primary and secondary school in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, you'll see that the real number needed is higher.
China has a list called the 现代汉语常用字表 (Modern Chinese Frequent Use Character Chart) of 3500 characters. These are broken up into two sections, 常用汉字 (Frequently Used Characters － 2500) and 次常用汉字 (Less Frequently Used Characters - 1000).
It's worth noting, however, that literacy in China is lower than in Taiwan and Hong Kong. This is due to many factors, but I wouldn't be surprised if the low number of 漢字 studied in school there contributes to some degree. That's just me theorizing; I don't have anything to back it up with.
Taiwan's Ministry of Education published a list in the '80s called the 常用國字標準字體表 (Chart of Standard Forms of Common National Characters) consisting of 4808 characters. I haven't been able to find it in a useful (I don't feel like compiling it by going through each of the 214 radicals and copying and pasting it all to make it usable). Thanks to transalpin for his link in FuDaWei's thread, I was looking for that forever.
However, I did run across this list of 5565 characters learned in school in Taiwan. I'm working on putting that in a useable format, but it may take some time.
Apparently, Hong Kong's list of characters to be learned in school (elementary and middle) has 4759 characters.
Another interesting thing is that in the Big5 encoding system, there are 5401 characters considered "common use." Also, in the CCCII encoding system, the common use traditional hanzi section is based on Taiwan's list of 4808 characters.
One thing to keep in mind is that in Taiwan and Hong Kong they will generally use more Classical Chinese in their writing than in Mainland China (better education? politics? different thread?), so that is partially responsible for the higher numbers. But I do think this all suggests pretty strongly that 3000 characters will not be enough if you want to really be fully literate. It may be enough for people who only want to read modern work (and not of a literary nature), but I seriously doubt it will be enough for anyone wanting to really enjoy the language's literature, or especially anyone wanting to study the language academically.
Many people here are familiar with zhongwen.com, and it does contain 4280 characters if I remember correctly. It also is available in book form, and IMO the book is better than the website. I really wish the website was text instead of images. As I mentioned I'm also working on putting the Taiwan list of 4808 characters into a usable format. I'm sure there are other great resources out there too.
Thoughts?
China has a list called the 现代汉语常用字表 (Modern Chinese Frequent Use Character Chart) of 3500 characters. These are broken up into two sections, 常用汉字 (Frequently Used Characters － 2500) and 次常用汉字 (Less Frequently Used Characters - 1000).
It's worth noting, however, that literacy in China is lower than in Taiwan and Hong Kong. This is due to many factors, but I wouldn't be surprised if the low number of 漢字 studied in school there contributes to some degree. That's just me theorizing; I don't have anything to back it up with.
Taiwan's Ministry of Education published a list in the '80s called the 常用國字標準字體表 (Chart of Standard Forms of Common National Characters) consisting of 4808 characters. I haven't been able to find it in a useful (I don't feel like compiling it by going through each of the 214 radicals and copying and pasting it all to make it usable). Thanks to transalpin for his link in FuDaWei's thread, I was looking for that forever.
However, I did run across this list of 5565 characters learned in school in Taiwan. I'm working on putting that in a useable format, but it may take some time.
Apparently, Hong Kong's list of characters to be learned in school (elementary and middle) has 4759 characters.
Another interesting thing is that in the Big5 encoding system, there are 5401 characters considered "common use." Also, in the CCCII encoding system, the common use traditional hanzi section is based on Taiwan's list of 4808 characters.
One thing to keep in mind is that in Taiwan and Hong Kong they will generally use more Classical Chinese in their writing than in Mainland China (better education? politics? different thread?), so that is partially responsible for the higher numbers. But I do think this all suggests pretty strongly that 3000 characters will not be enough if you want to really be fully literate. It may be enough for people who only want to read modern work (and not of a literary nature), but I seriously doubt it will be enough for anyone wanting to really enjoy the language's literature, or especially anyone wanting to study the language academically.
Many people here are familiar with zhongwen.com, and it does contain 4280 characters if I remember correctly. It also is available in book form, and IMO the book is better than the website. I really wish the website was text instead of images. As I mentioned I'm also working on putting the Taiwan list of 4808 characters into a usable format. I'm sure there are other great resources out there too.
Thoughts?