# Why 3,000 Chinese characters is not enough

**URL:** <https://community.hanzihero.com/t/why-3-000-chinese-characters-is-not-enough/332>\
**Category:** Videos\
**Created:** [January 17, 2024, 1:42am UTC](https://community.hanzihero.com/t/why-3-000-chinese-characters-is-not-enough/332 "2024-01-17T01:42:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kevin](https://community-cdn.hanzihero.com/user_avatar/community.hanzihero.com/kevin/32/68_2.png) [@kevin](https://community.hanzihero.com/u/kevin)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2024, 1:42am UTC](https://community.hanzihero.com/t/why-3-000-chinese-characters-is-not-enough/332/1 "2024-01-17T01:42:19Z")

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One of our major goals for HanziHero is to cover most characters the average user needs to learn on their long journey to a high level of literacy. In this video, I cover why 3k characters - the number commonly said to be “enough” and the upper-bound of most resources out there - is simply too little. The video uses basic corpus analysis to determine a more realistic goal of 4-5k characters which HanziHero aims to have for both scripts by end of this year.

[![](https://community-b2-cdn.hanzihero.com/original/1X/3c37cb3df28cf2737fe0e960100ef2682af42805.jpeg "Why 3,000 Chinese characters is not enough") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EJQ8mQlwMY)