History of education
Although there are more than 40,000 Chinese characters in written Chinese, many are rarely used. Studies have shown that full literacy in the Chinese language requires a knowledge of only between three and four thousand characters.
Written Hokkien
Writing Hokkien using Chinese characters is a common method of writing in Taiwanese literature. However, there are various problems relating to the use of Chinese characters to write vernacular Hokkien, and in many cases Chinese characters are used alongside other scripts, such as bopomofo or POJ. The problem with using only Chinese characters to write Min Nan is that there are many morphemes (estimated to be around 15 percent of running text) which are not definitively associated with a particular character. Various strategies have been developed to deal with the issue, including researching and reviving the etymologically correct Chinese character from ancient Chinese texts, and classical Chinese, creating new characters, allocating Chinese characters used in written Mandarin with similar meanings, but dissimilar etymology, to represent the missing characters, or using romanization for the "missing 15%".