How many characters are in Song of Solomon in Chinese?

3,426 Chinese characters in total, written with 680 distinct characters, across 117 verses and 8 chapters.

What HSK level do I need to read Song of Solomon?

64.1% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 75% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 20.2% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.

How long does Song of Solomon take to read in Chinese?

About 13 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.

Is Song of Solomon a good book to start with?

Yes — it ranks 11 of 66 books from easiest to hardest by vocabulary, so it is among the gentler starts.

Song of Solomon in Chinese: 680 Characters

Answering: “how many characters in Song of Solomon in Chinese”

Updated 2026-09-26 · plain text · JSON

Song of Solomon is a cycle of love poetry between two lovers, read in Jewish and Christian tradition both literally and allegorically.

Every figure below is counted from the 和合本 (Chinese Union Version), simplified script text of Song of Solomon 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.

Song of Solomon in numbers

Measure	Value
Chapters	8
Verses	117
Chinese characters	3,426
Distinct characters	680
Word tokens	2,538
Distinct words	735
Average verse	29 characters
HSK 1-3 word tokens	64.1%
HSK 1-6 word tokens	75%
Not in HSK 1-9	20.2%
Difficulty rank	11 of 66 (1 = easiest)
Reading time	13 min at 260 chars/min
Testament	Old Testament

The words Song of Solomon uses most

#	Word	Occurrences in this book
1	良人	33
2	如	25
3	好像	18
4	有	18
5	要	15
6	女子	15
7	一	14
8	心	13
9	众	12
10	爱	12
11	人	12
12	去	12
13	因	11
14	美丽	11
15	香	10
16	求	10
17	两	10
18	园	10
19	爱情	9
20	如同	9

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

Words that occur in Song of Solomon and nowhere else in the Bible

Words
佳偶良人凤仙花美人巡逻香花香草新娘累累

9 found, capped at 40 per book.

The easiest chapters of Song of Solomon

Chapter	HSK 1-3	Verses	Characters
Song of Solomon 2	69.5%	17	453
Song of Solomon 8	67.6%	14	456
Song of Solomon 5	63.7%	16	528
Song of Solomon 7	63.6%	13	363
Song of Solomon 3	62.8%	11	332
Song of Solomon 6	62.6%	13	379
Song of Solomon 1	61.6%	17	427
Song of Solomon 4	61.1%	16	488

Read it

Song of Solomon 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 Song of Solomon in Chinese?: 3,426 Chinese characters in total, written with 680 distinct characters, across 117 verses and 8 chapters.
What HSK level do I need to read Song of Solomon?: 64.1% of its word tokens are HSK 1-3 and 75% are within HSK 1-6; the remaining 20.2% are outside the HSK lists altogether, mostly names.
How long does Song of Solomon take to read in Chinese?: About 13 minutes at 260 characters a minute — a fluent pace, so expect two to four times that while learning.
Is Song of Solomon a good book to start with?: Yes — it ranks 11 of 66 books from easiest to hardest by vocabulary, so it is among the gentler starts.

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: 2026-09-26, 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).