[thaumasiotes]

> The consensus is that in aggregate (all language artifacts like writing, conjugation, syntax) no language is more complex than any other since complexity on one dimension (say chinese writing for Mandarin) is compensated in another (Mandarin morphology or conjugation).

That is broadly the consensus, with a couple of exceptions:

- Writing is not part of the language and doesn't factor into complexity anywhere. Chinese writing is much more complex than the writing system of most other languages, but that's just not relevant to the spoken language.

- Some languages are believed to be generally simpler than average due to having gone through a phase involving a large number of adults learning the language. Mandarin is one of those languages, as is English.