[RightWhale]

A Chinese person explained it. The ideographs are made up of about 40 smaller characters. True, pronunciation from the written word is a different matter. But, when we read English words we pretty much deal with them as units, which is not really so different.

[Dutch Boy]

Simplified Chinese has about 2500 words, Traditional has over 50,000. In simplified here are something like 240 radicals (partial words used to convey general meaning). There are eleven basic strokes. There are four(4) full tones and a half tone. Words also have different meanings based on the other words around it. It's enough to make my head explode.

Go to a book store and pick up a Chinese to English dictionary. I use the Xinhua dictionary with English translations the most. There is absolutely no way to sound out a Chinese word. I also have an electronic dictionary that speaks. That helps quite a bit too when I forget how my Chinese language professor said something.