Thanks for the figures reference. I was making a guess based on my limited vocabulary. But, having a core vocabulary + knowledge of history is still effective

Thanks for the figures reference. I was making a guess based on my limited vocabulary. But, having a core vocabulary + knowledge of history is still effective. If you go back far enough, my assessment could still be correct. That is, the original standardization (oracle bones -> Qin dynasty) of Chinese characters probably had less words constructed with a sound indicator. At the Qin dynasty, China became an empire and incorporated many new ethnic groups. It then had multiple words used in different regions (like he and jiang for river). Pictorial and semantic characters take more thought to construct, with pictorial probably more difficult and historical. Later on, it became possible to build upon these to quickly form characters, perhaps even as a shorthand. So it's not surprising that phono-semantic took over. This process even continued as traditional characters became simplified in modern times. Your discussion on what characters should sound like may be more complicated. Old Chinese pronunciation is much different from Mandarin, and today's simplified characters may or may not have followed the pattern (I don't know, I didn't learn simplified).