[Zakiazigazi]

> Do you visualize the shape of the word "bee"

Not sure about Chinese, it is supposedly much more phonetic, but the Japanese unquestionably do visualize words to the point where they on occasion are absolutely dumbfounded by words that are just slightly out of context and unless you tell them what kanji you meant they won't be able to easily associate pronounced words to meanings. In my opinion this is so deeply ingrained that society and language subtly changed in a way to alleviate the embarassment from misunderstandings paradoxically by making the already highly context sensitive language vague while also placing the responsibility of interpretation (but at the same time also allowing for some generous amount of flexibility) on the listener. The result - in my opinion - is a spoken language that is in a way tangibly insufficient for _practical_ dissemination of information exactly because of this constant need for visualization.

You can find the same thing in written language where writing words just in the phonetic alphabet renders it completely unreadable without the symbology. In return having the words rendered in the logography frees the mind from having to visualize and is performing much better as a coduit for information dissemination (with the small caveat that the spoken language already changed to include the various ambiguities)

In the end, while you don't necessarily visualize the image of a bee or the shape of the _phonetic_ spelling of the be, you do visualize the placeholder character for bee. (BTW interestingly, I don't think there is a separate word for bee and wasp in japanese, so naturally there is no difference perceived)