How many Chinese characters do you know? If you’re not sure, this hanzi vocabulary self-test might be helpful - just tell us whether you know each character that appears in the test, and we’ll estimate the total number of characters you know based on the results. If you’re not sure about a character, click the “show meaning” button to see the character’s pinyin and definition.
The test starts with the most simple common hanzi, but quickly moves on to harder characters as the test goes on - depending on your Chinese level, you’ll be asked between 10 and 60 questions. Although there are tens of thousands of Chinese characters, this test only includes the most common 5000, which is about the same number that a typical educated Chinese person would know.
If you want to expand your character vocabulary, you might find our HSK Characters page useful - it gives the list of characters you need to know for each level of the HSK test. Click a character to see its pronunciation, meaning, stroke order animation and a selection of words containing that character.
Twitter | 
Sina Weibo
6 responses so far ↓
1 nciku Quiz: Chinese Character Riddles
Sep 14, 2011 at 6:14 pm
[…] to test your hanzi knowledge, but found our Chinese character quiz a bit boring? Have a go at these Chinese character riddles […]
2 David Porter
May 12, 2012 at 5:25 am
Thank you, nciku–after all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!
Chinese learners might also like to have a look at the original Chinese Character Test on the Clavis Sinica website. It requires that you identify the correct pronunciation and meaning of a character in order to count it as correct. This is a useful feature for those who can’t trust themselves with the Honor System used here!
3 Kevin
Jun 26, 2012 at 7:05 pm
@David Porter if we’re imitating anyone, it’s testyourvocab.com. But more ways to improve your Chinese are always useful, so thanks for the suggestion!
We deliberately asked users whether they got the answer right rather than grading them automatically, because tests that try to do that usually fall into one of 2 traps:
1. If possible answers are given (multiple choice test), it’s easy to guess the correct answer by a process of elimination if you don’t know the word being asked. Even if you don’t try to rule out different options, the presence of the correct answer can serve as a reminder that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.
2. If possible answers aren’t given (write-in test), it’s quite common to enter the right answer but have it marked as wrong. For example, this test gives the definition of 有 [yǒu] as “have; possess; get”. Even though “has” is a perfectly accurate translation, it’s not included on the list so it would be marked as wrong.
4 Tevinn Richards
Sep 21, 2012 at 5:41 pm
Thank you very much for this. I’m currently studying in China as part of a program run by the Confucius Institute and Hanban representatives in my home province of New Brunswick, Canada, and I’ve been wondering how many characters I knew. I don’t know how accurate this is, but simply from comparing the quality of the other services you offer, I can assume that this one is at least generally correct. I’ve decided to take the test three times, and average it out, to give me the best result, and although I wouldn’t use these results as any kind of reference as to my Chinese character level in a professional sense, it was nice to be able to find out for my self where I stand.
I’ve been studying for about a year and a half on my own, and I only just three weeks ago arrived here in Qufu, but I’m happy to say that my average was 1036 between the three tests. Thank you for this wonderful service, I’ll do my best to have my friends give it a try. Also, if I get money in my Paypal account, I’ll make sure to send some in your direction. Thank you again for the amazing effort you must all put in to keep this wonderful site running and available to the public.
5 Kevin
Sep 26, 2012 at 4:27 pm
@Tevinn Thanks for your feedback! The test is meant for your own information rather than any sort of professional reference; the best way to explain its accuracy is to say how it works.
The quiz takes the top 5000 characters, and separates them into 6 levels by frequency, with increasing numbers of characters at each level (level 1 is characters 1-30, level 2 is 31-90, level 3 is 91-270 etc). We then randomly choose 10 characters at each level (starting with the easiest) and ask if you know them. We also end the test if you get 10 unknown characters in a row.
The “total characters known” figure is based on multiplying your score for each level with the total number of characters at that level - so if you correctly answer, say, 3 out of 10 questions from level 4, we assume that you know 162 of the 540 ‘level 4′ characters.
Of course, this is a fairly rough approximation - perhaps you actually knew 300 of those 540 characters, but were unlucky with which ones were randomly chosen. But it helps to give you a general idea of where you stand, and if you want more accurate results then taking it multiple times and averaging the values is a good way of doing that.
6 mrk
Apr 7, 2013 at 9:15 pm
在nciku这个网站中，这是我最喜欢的一种谜语
Leave a Comment