THE Chinese media is using fewer characters and to understand 90 per cent of the content in publications people need only know about 900 of the thousands of pictographs that make up the script, a new study has revealed.
The findings of a survey conducted by the education ministry and language commission were based on 900 million characters used in more than 8.9 million files chosen from newspapers, magazines, the internet and television.
China began simplifying its script after the Communist revolution in 1949, aiming to improve illiteracy from an estimated 80 per cent.
Written Chinese is made up of about 50,000 individual characters, whose main function is to represent meaning, not pronunciation.
Traditional, or "complex" characters are still used in Hong Kong, Taiwan and many overseas Chinese communities, though simplification is gradually creeping in.
