There are tens of thousands of Chinese characters, though most of them are only slightly different from each other and only seen in historical documents. Studies show that normally three to four thousand characters are used on a daily basis. Most of earlier Chinese characters were pictographs—simple pictures used to mean words, but few modern Chinese characters are pictographs. Many modern Chinese characters are a combination of two or more simple characters. Chinese characters may also be considered to be an abstract art because of how the characters are made up of lines and points.
汉字有成千上万个，尽管其中的大多数差别很细微，且只在历史文献中出现过。研究表明，日常使用的汉字大概有三至四千个。大多数早期汉字是象形字（pictographs），用简单的图画来代表字，但现代汉字中象形文字已经很少了。许多现代汉字是两个或两个以上简单文字的组合。汉字也可以因为其线条和点的排列组合方式被看成是一门抽象艺术（abstract art）。
