I mean, in total, since the first character was created, how many exist?
50.000? 100.000? More?

Does anyone actually know?
Tried googling it, but no concrete answer.

About 80,000. Most of the are obsolete ones though. You'll just need about 3000 to read literature stuff.

Givala Wrote:I mean, in total, since the first character was created, how many exist?
50.000? 100.000? More?

Does anyone actually know?
Tried googling it, but no concrete answer.

It's really impossible to say, because first you have to define what is a "character" (for instance, are the symbols on the Shang dynasty-era oracle bones "Chinese characters"?). It's also very hard to say what defines a new character rather than just a minor variant in handwriting style.

The Morohashi dictionary has a little over 50,000, and I believe there are Chinese dictionaries that are over 80,000. However, the vast majority (probably 85% or so) of these characters are simply variant forms of other characters. Sometimes the variants differ in very small ways, just a single line or dot difference.

Hmm... Interesting.

Thank you both for answering!