yeah people trot out that stuff all the time about there bein to many hominims in chinese so there for they need the caraters ,, what people fale to reelize is that most chinese words aint single sylabels no more ,, that was clasical chinese and cantonese ,,, in modern times its generaly 2-sylabel words and 3-sylabel words ,,,,, so in context , it aint nearly as hard as people think to figure out what some thing means ,,,,, i aint sayin that caracters is bad ,, just sayin that the notion of how inextricable they are too the spoken languige is way over stated ,,,,,,,,

check out The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy by John DeFrancis , publeshed in 1984. it has a real good chapter called "The Indispensibility Myth." it talks about what i was sayin ,,