[thaumasiotes]

> If you can read a menu the thing that’s stopping you from reading and understanding a complex text isn’t about letters and sentences; it’s the inability to recurse on abstract thought and build complicated thoughts that depend on a body of knowledge.

I can often do a decent job reading a menu in Chinese. A complex text would take hours per page and be totally opaque in many parts. (And partially opaque in probably the majority of the text.)

I would argue that in fact what's stopping me from reading complex texts is lack of knowledge of the letters, the words, and the correct structure of sentences.