The Chinese alphabet: the 100 most common Chinese characters

Chinese has no alphabet. It is written in characters, one per syllable, and everyday Chinese uses about 3,500 of them. But the list has a very short head: the 100 characters below make up 41.8% of everything written in modern Chinese. Each one comes with its pinyin, the Latin spelling of its sound and the nearest thing Chinese has to an alphabet, and the meaning that makes it so common.

13 of them have a second reading

The chart gives the reading that makes each character common. These 13 have another one you will meet early: 的 de / dí, dì · 了 le / liǎo · 为 wèi / wéi · 地 de / dì · 子 zǐ / zi · 得 de / dé, děi · 着 zhe / zháo · 发 fā / fà · 行 xíng / háng · 种 zhǒng / zhòng · 都 dōu / dū · 还 hái / huán · 只 zhǐ / zhī.

All 100 as text

To copy into flashcards, in the same order:

的 一 是 不 了 在 人 有 我 他 这 个 们 中 来 上 大 为 和 国 地 到 以 说 时 要 就 出 会 可 也 你 对 生 能 而 子 那 得 于 着 下 自 之 年 过 发 后 作 里 用 道 行 所 然 家 种 事 成 方 多 经 么 去 法 学 如 都 同 现 当 没 动 面 起 看 定 天 分 还 进 好 小 部 其 些 主 样 理 心 她 本 前 开 但 因 只 从 想 实

Where the order comes from

The ranking is Jun Da, Modern Chinese Character Frequency List, counted over about 194 million characters of modern written Chinese. That is why 的 (the possessive particle) is first and why literary words like 之 and 于 are in the top 50: this is the Chinese of books and newspapers. The words you need first for speaking are on the HSK 1 list; every character above links to its LexiTrail word page, or to the first word that uses it.

Keep going

Practise HSK 1 words →