# 3,253 Words Cover 95% of the Bible

> 3,253 words cover 95% of the word tokens in the Chinese Union Version (和合本, simplified); 99 words cover half of it, and the whole text draws on 11,168.

Question: how many words to read the Bible
Answer: 3,253
Page: https://chinese-bible.com/en/reference/words-needed-to-read-the-bible

Vocabulary, not characters, is what decides whether a verse makes sense. This curve is computed on segmented words: the text is split by matching the longest CC-CEDICT entry at each position, and each occurrence counted.

The practical reading of it: a learner with an HSK 4 vocabulary knows 63.2% of the word tokens here, and the gap to 95% is mostly proper names and terms of worship — the sort of vocabulary a Bible-specific deck teaches faster than a general course.

A book-by-book deck is the shortcut: John uses 1,647 distinct words in all, and its 200 most frequent content words already account for 39% of its word tokens — a far smaller job than the 11,168 words of the whole Bible, which is why every book here has a deck of its own.

## The twelve most frequent content words

| # | Word | Occurrences |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | 说 | 8,851 |
| 2 | 人 | 8,743 |
| 3 | 耶和华 | 6,960 |
| 4 | 要 | 6,355 |
| 5 | 必 | 4,584 |
| 6 | 神 | 4,361 |
| 7 | 有 | 4,163 |
| 8 | 王 | 3,065 |
| 9 | 地 | 2,826 |
| 10 | 使 | 2,754 |
| 11 | 去 | 2,752 |
| 12 | 来 | 2,691 |

Function words (的, 了, 是 and the like) are excluded — they top every Chinese list and teach nothing.

## Questions

**Why exclude function words?**

Because a vocabulary list that opens with 的 is not useful. They are counted in the totals and in the coverage curve, just not shown as words to learn.

**Can I get these as flashcards?**

Yes — by HSK level, by book or by topic, exportable to Anki, Pleco, Quizlet or CSV with pinyin, meaning and real verses.

**How many words appear only once?**

2,579 of the 11,168 — so almost a quarter of the vocabulary can be skipped on a first reading.

## Method

- Text: 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script — public domain
- Words: forward maximum matching against CC-CEDICT (this site's own segmentation)
- 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)
- Computed: 2026-09-22

These are reproducible counts over a public-domain text, not a peer-reviewed study. Difficulty ranks are one stated formula, not a validated readability score.


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- 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).
- Bible text: public domain — 和合本 · World English Bible · Louis Segond 1910.
- Built with https://chinese-bible.com