> I know next-to-nothing about Chinese, but it seems to me that if a language can be spoken, it can be represented with a phonetic alphabet.
You might be interested in this:
http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm
One interesting thing I learned from it the logographic aspects of written Chinese have influenced spoken Chinese by encouraging short, phonetically-ambiguous abbreviations that tend to replace the original phonetically-distinct words.
> Those sentences which only make sense in traditionally-written, not spoken or phonetically-written Chinese, would obviously be a huge cultural loss.
That's already happened to a degree. The Chinese dropped written Classical Chinese for written Mandarin, which is based on a vernacular. That's akin to the West dropping written Latin in favor of vernacular writing. I understand Classical Chinese needs to be translated to be understood.
