How many Chinese characters are there?

We have all heard claims that Chinese people use tens of thousands of Chinese characters to write. Some websites would even tell you that there are over a hundred thousand (yes, 100K!) characters. Is this really true? How is it possible to write with such as script? The truth is that only the largest dictionaries have these many characters but no living person knows them all. People only use about 3,000-6,000 characters, depending on their level of education. This is enough for most people, and it would certainly be enough for you, if you are learning Chinese. So there is absolutely no need to memorize tens of thousands of characters! You only need to learn a fraction of that, which is completely doable.

----Contents of the video----
00:00 Intro
00:44 Growing number of characters
02:30 Variants
04:01 Simplified characters
04:40 Japan
05:35 No upper limit
06:13 Actual use

[jameelahedwards]

Thank you for explaining the different numbers