[Dewie]

> built around a relatively small alphabet is simply superior.

How? With a smaller alphabet, words can tend to comprise of more letters; with a larger alphabet, words can tend to comprise of fewer letters. It might be that smaller is better in this case for storing text efficiently, but I don't see how it obviously follows.

[TylerE]

Physical size of an input device to enter each character with a single press.

[Dewie]

I have seen a video of - I can't seem to find it - someone using a sort of keyboard, only smaller. She would use fewer key presses to type in English than on a standard keyboard, because she was typing in one grapheme at a time, or something like that.

Do the Chinese really think of Mandarin as containing discrete characters? Or do they consider the signs as compositions of each other? I haven't tried writing Chinese or something like that with some input device. Have you?