Chinese Harry Potter: How Many Chinese Characters?

Kevin Kevin \\

If you are starting to learn Chinese, reading something like Harry Potter (哈利波特) in Chinese may be one of your goals. I know it was when I started learning Chinese years ago.

Harry Potter Chinese

Like I was then, you may be wondering how many characters there are in Harry Potter. You may also be wondering if reading Harry Potter is a good goal to have for a Chinese learner. We’ll cover both of those in this article.

Why Harry Potter?

If you haven’t quite decided on whether or not you want to set reading the Chinese translation of Harry Potter as your goal, you may be wondering why so many people set themselves on this path.

Let’s cover some main reasons for doing so.

Familiar story

To begin with, there is a good chance you are already familiar with the story of Harry Potter. This could be from watching all the movies, reading most of the books, or playing a bunch of Harry Potter videogames.

Story familiarity means that you need to focus less on overall conceptual comprehension of what is going on, and can instead spend more time focusing on language comprehension of what is written. In other words, you already know what is going to happen, so you don’t need to worry about missing any major plot points. Instead you can focus on the meaning of each excerpt of text and how that relates to the overall story.

Ample practice

Even in English, Harry Potter is an extremely long series. It in fact contains over one million English words, more than probably any other series you have ever read in your life.

This ample amount of content, most of which is pertaining to the same topics of school and wizardry, gives you both content and repetition which are great for practicing Chinese reading.

Native-focused material

Unlike many learning resources, the Chinese translation of Harry Potter is meant for native Chinese speaking children and adults to read. Because of this, you will not encounter artificially sounding phrases and words that you would in a textbook which is meant to edify you.

Given that the goal of many Chinese learners is to be able to engage with native Chinese media, it is easy to see why so many start with simple young adult fiction books instead of stodgy (though useful) textbooks.

The version of Harry Potter we are using

There are many different Chinese translations of Harry Potter. The one we are using in this analysis is this traditional Chinese version.

Different versions, especially those in simplified script, may differ. However, given that the underlying content is the same across all versions, I believe it is safe to assume most editions should roughly have the same character counts.

How many total Chinese characters?

There are 1,751,475 total Chinese characters in the entirety of this Chinese edition of Harry Potter. Broken down by book:

  1. Philosopher’s Stone (神秘的魔法石): 131701 total Chinese characters
  2. Chamber of Secrets (消失的密室): 141982 total Chinese characters
  3. Prisoner of Azkaban (阿茲卡班的逃犯): 178806 total Chinese characters
  4. Goblet of Fire (火盃的考驗): 315735 total Chinese characters
  5. Order of the Phoenix (鳳凰會的密令): 410741 total Chinese characters
  6. Half-Blood Prince (混血王子的背叛): 267115 total Chinese characters
  7. Deathly Hallows (死神的聖物): 305395 total Chinese characters

How many unique Chinese characters?

There are 4,026 unique Chinese characters in the entirety of this Chinese edition of Harry Potter. Broken down by book:

  1. Philosopher’s Stone (神秘的魔法石): 2802 unique Chinese characters
  2. Chamber of Secrets (消失的密室): 2842 unique Chinese characters
  3. Prisoner of Azkaban (阿茲卡班的逃犯): 2750 unique Chinese characters
  4. Goblet of Fire (火盃的考驗): 3223 unique Chinese characters
  5. Order of the Phoenix (鳳凰會的密令): 3325 unique Chinese characters
  6. Half-Blood Prince (混血王子的背叛): 3129 unique Chinese characters
  7. Deathly Hallows (死神的聖物): 3290 unique Chinese characters

Note that unlike the number of total characters, we don’t simply add up the number of unique characters per book to get the number of unique characters across all books. Instead, we need to analyze the complete text of all books combined to see the overall number of unique characters for the series.

Learning enough characters for Harry Potter

As we can see, the number of unique characters in Harry Potter is far greater than the 3,000 characters within the HSK. In other words, in order to read Harry Potter aloud without any dictionary assistance, you will need to memorize over 1,000 more characters than most educational resources will ever teach you.

Luckily, HanziHero teaches over 3,900 traditional characters and 3,200 simplified characters at the time this article was written, with a goal of covering over 4,000 characters for both simplified and traditional within the next year. In other words, if you are starting from scratch today, we will have all the characters you need to learn in HanziHero well before you get to studying those extra, more rare characters.

Our goal at HanziHero is to make learning Chinese characters as easy and enjoyable as possible. We have our own built-in SRS and mnemonic system to make learning and remembering Chinese characters a breeze. More than that, we teach vocabulary words for each character you learn, assuring you truly understand each character.

If you are looking to eventually read Harry Potter, or just want to upgrade your Chinese character knowledge, try out HanziHero. We has a generous free tier with no time limit, allowing you to take your time to see if it fits your learning style.

Best of luck in your Chinese journey!

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