How many Chinese characters (words) are there in total?

Answer 1

Well, it ranges from 40,000 to 80,000 because it's really difficult to give an exact count as to the number of characters, since many of them are obscure, unused, or arcahic variants, even though they are all different.

For example, "two" is normally written as 二
However, these two characters: 貳 弍 are ancient, though pretty much unused, ways to write it.

Check out the first source for more info. I hope this helps :)

Answer 2

In total, it is somewhere around 100,000 characters. That is why literacy in ancient times (and even in modern times, when using the Chinese character alphabet) was so very difficult. Each of those characters had to be memorized, and used in the proper context.

Answer 3

what dialect of Chinese?
Its hard to give you a correct answer if you are not specific about dialect and modern or acient times.

Answer 4

Too many!