that's a good point, two syllabries + kanji + furigana for non-joyo is a finite set, whereas chinese is a open set (virtually). some spoken languages are known

that's a good point, two syllabries + kanji + furigana for non-joyo is a finite set, whereas chinese is a open set (virtually). some spoken languages are known to be simpler than others, as measured through their phonology, morphology and syntax. trade languages, creoles, pidgins, etc. mandarin is a trade language/pidgin of sorts, with resulting simplification of its phonology relative to other dialects. bahasa indonesian is another well-known example. fun factoid: while the number of Chinese characters throughout history number in the hundreds of thousands, the working set for any one writer at any time has been shown through textual analysis to be ~8000 for a well-educated person, with an upper bounds under 20K.