Eh, the complaints about the characters seem mostly overblown. I think I picked up about 2,000 in a year, and that was not studying particularly hard. Past a ce

Eh, the complaints about the characters seem mostly overblown. I think I picked up about 2,000 in a year, and that was not studying particularly hard. Past a certain point most of the new characters are combinations of characters you've already studied. Of course, if you're not practicing your reading it's . Also, if you have at least a decent level in the language it's not going to be unfamiliar characters that give you trouble in newspaper articles (most of the unfamiliar characters you run into will be from names or chengyu), but Chinese words your unfamiliar with. And in these cases, the characters actually help; you're going to have a much easier time guessing what "jacuzzi" or "phlebitis" mean in Chinese than in English.