Haha, yeah well, of course it&#x27;s not perfect, but let&#x27;s not pretend Latin languages don&#x27;t have their own unique set of problems ;-)<p>I&#x27;m acutely aware that 500 Kanji isn&#x27;t nearly enough to read even the most basic of texts, unfortunately... But considering it &#x27;only&#x27; took me 1.5 years to get to this point at a leisury pace, I would assume that anyone should be able to get to ~2000 Kanji within 2 years if you really put the effort in. If you get to JLPT N5 (~2000 Kanji) you should be able to read anything but Japanese literature. Don&#x27;t know how this works for Mandarin or other Chinese dialects, but I would assume there&#x27;s a base set of around the same size that should be sufficient for daily life.<p>The article title was implying the Chinese writing system is a &#x27;brake on development&#x27;, which IMO is nothing but hyperbole, and neglects that logographic writing systems also have their advantages.