Where can I find Chinese word lists

I’m entertaining the idea of teaching myself to read and write Chinese again, so does anyone know if I can find those lists of words kids in a given grade need to know online? Or am I going to be ordering a lot of textbooks from China in the future?

Have you looked at zhongwen.com? There’s all sorts of resources there, including a list of the most commonly used characters. I don’t think there’s any simple vocabulary lists, but the online dictionary is helpful.

I have found WenLin useful. It is a software dictionary and lists characters and words by how often they are used. That’s a crap-shoot, of course, depending on your usage base, but the averages for the most-commonly-used words is probably pretty good. It’s $200-$250 depending on where you buy it–I have found it invaluable (but my Chinese is not very good, so YMMV :)).

This is code for your mother is pressuring you to relearn chinese so that the old ways are not lost forever, isn’t it?

:smiley:

She doesn’t know. She gave up trying to teach me years ago, saying “Well, at least she can still speak.” And seriously? With over a billion Chinese in the world, the old ways are going to be really freaking hard to lose :smiley:

Right now I have my old textbooks for grades 1, 2, 3 and 5. Dunno what I’m going to do for the other grades but the first 3 should last me a while.