Written Chinese
Written Chinese () comprises Chinese characters used to represent the Chinese language. Chinese characters do not constitute an alphabet or a compact syllabary. Rather, the writing system is roughly logosyllabic; that is, a character generally represents one syllable of spoken Chinese and may be a word on its own or a part of a polysyllabic word. The characters themselves are often composed of parts that may represent physical objects, abstract notions, or pronunciation. Literacy requires the memorization of a great many characters: educated Chinese know about 4,000. The large number of Chinese characters has in part led to the adoption of Western alphabets as an auxiliary means of representing Chinese.
Chinese as a foreign language
While English uses an alphabet, Chinese uses "hanzi", or Chinese characters, as its writing system. The "Kangxi dictionary" contains 47,035 characters (). However, most of the characters contained there are archaic and obscure. The Chart of Common Characters of Modern Chinese (), promulgated in People's Republic of China, lists 2,500 common characters and 1,000 less-than-common characters, while the Chart of Generally Utilized Characters of Modern Chinese () lists 7,000 characters, including the 3,500 characters already listed above.