As is known to all that more and more foreigners are learning Chinese these days. For specific purposes, they want to know how long to learn 8,000 Chinese characters.
As a native-speaking Chinese person, I’m very glad that people from other countries and regions are asking similar questions, which means Chinese has becoming more and more significant in the world.
So how long to learn 8,000 Chinese characters, let’s focus on the interesting question.
Time Needs for Leaning 8000 Chinese characters
If you are planning to acquire so many Chinese characters in a few weeks, I would say it’s almost impossible. I’ve never heard about people who are able to make such a big progress in such a short period of time.
How long does it take to learn basic Mandarin？
It is clear that 8,000 is a way too large amount that even HSK 6 has only about 5,000 characters.
Don’t be in a hurry. Instead, you may as well focus on your learning quality. If you have enough time to learn every day, for instance 3 hours, you could learn 15 Chinese characters a day. Keep doing that for about 3 months, you will be surprised to find that you are able to type, read, and speak many Chinese words, and have a basic understanding about Chinese, which is much better than that three months ago.
How long does it take to get to HSK 2?
If you just want to talk to people in Chinese, maybe you only need to reach the level of HSK 4. At that time, you don’t need to rely on English, or your mother tongue, anymore. While if you are planning to negotiate in Chinese or use Chinese to talk about more esoteric topics, then HSK 4 is never enough.
When you reach HSK 4, you can only talk like a first grader in Chinese, simple and smooth. But for broader purposes, you have to reach HSK 6, which means you need to acquire 5,000 words.
Remember what’s the topic of this article? How long to learn 8,000 Chinese characters? Frankly speaking, even native Chinese speakers can’t grasp so many characters. Only those whose career is to analyze Chinese characters can distinguish so many, we can them scholars who study Chinese.
Keep Your Goal in Your Mind
So, if you just want to order food, shop, travel, and chit chat in Chinese, you only need to acquire about 3,000 Chinese characters. My friend Jack is learning Chinese too, he often asks me questions about how to learn Chinese.
And I tell him to learn step by step, there is no need to hurry. He’s nowhere near HSK 6, but I have to say his speaking and understanding ability is better than someone at HSK 6, by the way he’s only at HSK 4.
How long to learn 8,000 Chinese characters is never a question you should think about, the question you really need to focus on maybe that how long to learn 10-15 Chinese characters in a day.
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