Character amnesia
It is difficult to establish exactly how many different Chinese characters are in use today; the new HSK, a widely used proficiency test for Standard Chinese as a second language, tests over 2,600 different characters, whilst in 1988 the People's Republic of China published the "List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese" which contains 7,000 different characters. In Japan, where a smaller set of characters are in general usage, the Japanese Ministry of Education prescribes the teaching of 2,136 kanji in primary and secondary school in a list called the jōyō kanji, meaning "regular-use Chinese characters".
A Dictionary of the Chinese Language
Part I, A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, is supertitled in Chinese—but not English—as a "character dictionary" (). It was a Chinese-to-English dictionary, organized by the 214 radical system employed by the 1716 "Kangxi Dictionary". These radicals are the initial or major graphic components of Chinese characters, ranging from 1 to 17 strokes. In Morrison's dictionary, Volume I starts with Radical 1 (, "one") and ends at Radical 41 ( ("thumb; Chinese inch") ; Volume II starts with Radical 42 (, "small") and stops at Radical 119 (, "rice") ; and Volume III begins with Radical 120 (, "silk") and ends the dictionary with Radical 214 (, "flute") . Vols. II & III were published simultaneously in London by Kingsbury, Parbury, & Allen.