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[–] WhiteRonin ago 

That is an interesting idea but ...

After having spent over 2,000 years simplifying them? I doubt that they would bother.

Chinese characters were created basically in 3 ways:

  1. From pictures. Sun, moon and mountains are your basics.

  2. From cracking turtle shells with hot pokers. The shells would crack and those cracks were interpreted as prophetic readings. I guess many cracks looked similar so they ended up as words/ideas.

  3. The third, IRC, were created from base forms similar to how English uses letters to form a word.

Now, do you really sound out C - A - T we you see the word cat or do you already see it at one glance as the word cat and even more interesting already see a picture of one on your mind?

I can read and write Japanese so when I see 猫 or 車, I don't change the Chinese character to Japanese sounds and then convert them to mean cat or car. I just see the characters as I would incision a set of books when I read the word encyclopedia.