[hintymad]

> it's chunking.

I guess the ultimate question is whether we can have a spelling system that totally mimics how we communicate verbally, so chunking becomes as easy as when we listen to the the spoken language.

I doubt it will happen though. Historical heritage aside, Kanji does pack enough information to make reading very easy. Unless government interferes hard, the new system needs to be way better than the existing one to get adopted.

[coffeeling]

It doesn't even need to do that. Korean and Vietnamese are easy examples where all the writing is phonetic despite Korean having basically the same structure and problems with Chinese loans as Japanese, and Vietnamese having a ton of Sinitic loans and general properties that are basically the same as Chinese. Yet phonetic writing just works.