How many characters are in Romans in Chinese?

12,252 Chinese characters in total, written with 971 distinct characters, across 433 verses and 16 chapters.

What HSK level do I need to read Romans?

59.1% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 72.9% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 20.5% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does Romans take to read in Chinese?

About 47 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is Romans a good book to start with?

Not the gentlest: it ranks 32 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

Romans in Chinese: 971 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in Romans in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-22 · plain text · JSON

Romans is Paul's most systematic letter, setting out his understanding of sin, grace and the place of Israel, written to a church he had not yet visited.

Every figure below is counted from the 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script text of Romans on this site: characters from the simplified text, words from its segmentation, HSK levels from the word lists. The difficulty rank compares this book with the other 65 by the share of word tokens at HSK 1-3.

Romans in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	16
Verses	433
Chinese characters	12,252
Distinct characters	971
Word tokens	8,665
Distinct words	1,504
Average verse	28 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	59.1%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	72.9%
Not in HSK 1-9	20.5%
Difficulty rank	32 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	47 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	New Testament

The words Romans uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	神	173
2	人	148
3	要	77
4	因	70
5	说	67
6	律法	67
7	死	63
8	义	58
9	罪	56
10	叫	55
11	作	53
12	有	48
13	基督	48
14	信	47
15	主	45
16	若	37
17	得	36
18	给	35
19	受	34
20	就是	33

Function words excluded. Each word has its own page with pinyin, stroke order and the verses it appears in.

Words that occur in Romans and nowhere else in the Bible

Words
奉召余数踪迹西班牙模范仪老练人体

8 found, capped at 40 per book.

The easiest chapters of Romans

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
Romans 10	66.6%	21	538
Romans 7	63.5%	25	777
Romans 14	62.9%	23	630
Romans 4	62.5%	25	729
Romans 9	60.8%	33	965
Romans 8	58.9%	39	1,126
Romans 11	58.9%	36	1,037
Romans 3	58.4%	31	761

Read it

Romans in the parallel reader — Chinese, pinyin and your own language side by side. Or take its vocabulary deck first, ordered by how often each word occurs in this book.

Questions

How many characters are in Romans in Chinese?: 12,252 Chinese characters in total, written with 971 distinct characters, across 433 verses and 16 chapters.
What HSK level do I need to read Romans?: 59.1% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 72.9% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 20.5% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does Romans take to read in Chinese?: About 47 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is Romans a good book to start with?: Not the gentlest: it ranks 32 of 66 by vocabulary. John and Matthew are easier by this measure.

Related reference pages

Take it further

97 ready-made vocabulary decks — by HSK level, by book or by topic, exportable to Anki, Pleco or Quizlet.
Printable 田字格 worksheets — passages with pinyin, meanings and tracing rows.
The parallel reader — Chinese, pinyin and your own language side by side, every word tappable.
The dataset behind these numbers — plain JSON, free to reuse with attribution.

How these numbers were produced

Text: 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script — public domain — 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,021 verses.
Words: forward maximum matching against CC-CEDICT (this site's own segmentation). A different segmenter gives slightly different word counts; character counts are unaffected.
HSK levels: HSK 3.0 levels from the complete-hsk-vocabulary list; band 7 covers HSK 7-9.
Reading times: 260 characters a minute — an assumption about a fluent adult reader, not a measurement.
Computed: 2026-09-22, from the text on this site.

These are counts anyone can reproduce from the published dataset. They are not a peer-reviewed linguistic study, and the difficulty rankings are one stated formula rather than a validated readability score.

Definitions: CC-CEDICT, licensed CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). If you share this file onward, keep this notice and share alike. Character data: Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License / LGPL).