[davidjohnstone]

The comparison between Latin in Europe in the early modern period and literary Chinese in the Sinosphere for much of history is pretty good (and often made). Latin and literary Chinese are very different languages, but had similar roles in society by being the standard written language in a world where everybody spoke different languages (that were heavily influenced by, or even derived from, but different to the written form).

[SECProto]

Fair enough, there are similarities. However, alphabetically written languages are the same as their spoken - learn how to pronounce a hundred letter combinations and exceptions, and as long as you know the spoken language you're good. However with latin, pronouncing it wouldn't help with comprehension. With logographically represented languages, the characters have more to do with meaning than with pronunciation. It's part of why Chinese characters were used for completely different spoken languages (Korean, Japanese)