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Comment by Chathamization

No, I'm genuinely confused by your claim that in order for Chinese to be similar to English in this manner, it would be "somehow unique among all human languages." These are contradictory ideas. That's why I was asking for clarity.

> I'm objecting to your argument that Chinese would be an incomprehensible mess if written alphabetically.

That's fine, but it runs directly counter to your initial comment. If a phonetic transcription would make Chinese just as easy to understand as it is written now, it would be quite different from English, and almost every other written language, all of which include non-phonetic elements in order to facilitate reading.

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