HSKWin

HSK 2 vocabulary — 200 words to learn

The 200 words the HSK 3.0 syllabus adds at HSK 2, each with the syllabus’s own pinyin and part of speech, an English meaning and audio. Free to read, and no account needed — tap any word to hear it.

200
words HSK 2 adds
500
by the end of HSK 2
300
under the retired HSK 2.0
96
very common in everyday Chinese
HSK 2 flashcardsPDF

The full HSK 2 vocabulary list — all 200 words

Sorted by pinyin, twenty words to a page. Every word is in this page already — turning a page only changes what is on screen. Pick a letter on the left to see just that section.

A2

助modal particle ending sentence, showing affirmation, approval, or consent

动、名to like; to be fond of; to take pleasure in; to be keen on; interest; hobby

B11

名white; the colour white

名、（量）team; class; grade; (military) squad; work shift

动to help; to assist; to support

动to help; to lend a hand; to do a favor

动、名、量to cover; to wrap; to hold

名book; notebook; Japanese-style self-published comic (esp. an erotic one), aka "dōjinshi"

动、介to compare; to gesture; (followed by a noun and adjective) more {adj.} than {noun}

名、（量）writing brush; writing implement (pen, pencil etc); brushstroke; stroke (in painting or calligraphy); (bound form) st…

副don't (do sth); to leave, to part; other, another

形correct; right; not bad

to feel embarrassed; to find it embarrassing; to be sorry (for inconveniencing sb)

C13

形long; (bound form) length; (bound form) strong point; forte

名rail station; bus stop

动to go out; to come out; to arise; to occur; to produce; to yield

动to go abroad; to leave the country

动to come out; to appear; to arise

动to go out; to leave home; to go on a journey

动to go out

Words 1–20 of 200 · page 1 of 10 · tap a word to hear it

How many words does HSK 2 add?

HSK 2 adds 200 words to the HSK 3.0 syllabus — 2% of all 11,000 — and brings the total you need to 500.

Nouns 名
93
Verbs 动
70
Adjectives 形
21
Adverbs 副
16
Measure words 量
14
Pronouns 代
6
Numbers 数
2
Function words 虚词
19

Which HSK 2 words matter most?

Nothing in the syllabus says which words to learn first — it grades them into nine levels and stops there. So the list measures something outside the exam instead: how often each word turns up in everyday Chinese.

96 of them (48%) are among the most common words in everyday Chinese — roughly one in every ten thousand words you meet. The most common at this level:

  • 就jiù
  • 等děng
  • 但dàn
  • 让ràng
  • 从cóng
  • 着zhe
  • 自己zìjǐ
  • 时shí
  • 因为yīnwèi
  • 过guò
  • 过guo
  • 地de

And the most common nouns, verbs and adjectives among them — the ones worth learning first:

  • 时shí
  • 过guò
  • 开始kāishǐ
  • 可能kěnéng
  • 出chū
  • 快kuài
  • 长cháng
  • 高gāo
  • 起来qǐlái
  • 希望xīwàng
  • 点diǎn
  • 出来chūlái

The three bars are how often the word turns up in everyday Chinese, from wordfreq’s mixed corpus of subtitles, news, books and Wikipedia — three bars is roughly one word in ten thousand. The syllabus itself marks no key words, so this is an outside measure, not an official one, and it counts written forms: a word spelled like a commoner one (等, 打) reads higher than it is.

HSK 2 vocabulary: HSK 2.0 vs HSK 3.0

Under HSK 2.0, HSK 2 added 150 words, for 300 in total. The HSK 3.0 syllabus adds 200 at Level 2 and expects 500 by the end of it — 200 more words in total, 1.7 times the old list.

Words, HSK 2.0 against HSK 3.0HSK 2.0HSK 3.0 syllabus
LevelWordsChange
Added at HSK 2
150
200
+50 · ×1.3
Total by the end of HSK 2
300
500
+200 · ×1.7

HSK 2 vocabulary FAQ

Is HSK 3.0 the same as HSK Level 3?

No. HSK 3.0 is the version of the exam: CTI published its syllabus in November 2025, in force from July 2026. HSK Level 3 is one of the nine levels inside it. This page is the HSK 3.0 list for HSK 2; HSKWin tracks when each level’s sittings switch to 3.0 on its status page.

HSK 3.0 status tracker

How long does it take to learn the 200 HSK 2 words?

At one round of 20 new words a day — the pace the flashcards deal them — you meet all 200 in about 10 days. They then bring each word back after a day, three days, a week and three weeks, so the last ones need about three more weeks to settle: roughly 4 weeks in all.

Do I need the HSK 1 words as well?

Yes. Each level’s list only adds to the ones below it, and the exam assumes all of them: HSK 2 expects 500 words in total — the 200 on this page plus 300 from HSK 1. Switch the list to “with earlier levels” to see them together.

Why do other lists give a different word count for HSK 2?

Three counts circulate. The old HSK 2.0 asked for 300 words by the end of HSK 2. The 2021 standard (GF0025-2021) gives 1,272 — the figure many sites still quote. The exam syllabus CTI published in November 2025, which this list follows, gives 500. The papers are written from the syllabus, so it is the list to learn.

Other HSK vocabulary lists

HSK 1 vocabularyHSK 2 vocabularyHSK 3 vocabularyHSK 4 vocabularyHSK 5 vocabularyHSK 6 vocabularyHSK 7–9 vocabulary
HSK 2 mock testHSK 2 flashcardsHSK 2 reading practice

After a HSK 2 mock test, put your section scores into the HSK score calculator to check the total against the pass mark and see which section the words need to help most.

Word list, pinyin and part of speech: 《中文水平考试（HSK）考试大纲》, published by CTI in November 2025 and in force from July 2026 — 11,000 words, the same document the papers here are built against. English glosses from CC-CEDICT, used under CC BY-SA 4.0. How common each word is comes from wordfreq by Robyn Speer, whose Chinese data is drawn from film subtitles (OpenSubtitles, SUBTLEX-CH by Marc Brysbaert and colleagues, freely available), Wikipedia, news and books, and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Pronunciation plays the word’s own audio clip, generated with a Mandarin text-to-speech voice; where a clip is not available, your browser’s Chinese voice reads the word instead.