How many letters are there in the Chinese alphabet. I presume they use keyboards and typrwriters. Do they (the Chinese)follow their own calnader. If so what is their current year known as?

Senior Moments

The current year is Year of the Snake. As from the 21st January it becomes Year of the Horse. There is no such thing as an alphabet in China.'Alphabet' comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet (alpha and beta) because it was the Greeks who adopted this writing system from the Middle East and transmitted it to the rest of Europe. Chinese writing developed as a system where the symbols represent concepts. It almost invariably stands for a semantic value. The very first characters developed from the graphic representation of certain objects (i.e. the picture of an elephant meant an elephant) It is thought that a person should know at least 3,000 characters to be able to understand newspapers.Small dictionaries contain at least 6,000 characters, the largest ones (Kangxi zidian, Morohashi Daikanwa jiten) can have as many as 40-50,000. Of course, it is an impossible task to memorize so many characters The fact is, however, that only about 6,000 characters are essential in everyday use and Chinese students acquire these in the course of several years. Jan 07 02, 9:30 PM