> Someone who's literate in Chinese would only be able to infer the meaning of an unfamiliar character if they already knew all of the surrounding characters.
In what I wrote, I was assuming there would be no unfamiliar characters, but there would be one or more unfamiliar words composed of two or more characters.
I was trying to put forward the best argument I could think of for retaining the characters, but like you, have decided it isn't worth the additional effort of learning thousands of characters up front to become literate when you can use a phonetic script and look up any unfamiliar words in a dictionary instead.
In what I wrote, I was assuming there would be no unfamiliar characters, but there would be one or more unfamiliar words composed of two or more characters.
I was trying to put forward the best argument I could think of for retaining the characters, but like you, have decided it isn't worth the additional effort of learning thousands of characters up front to become literate when you can use a phonetic script and look up any unfamiliar words in a dictionary instead.