Not really, memorising is nearly everything in language. If you don't even know the terms to communicate what can you do at all? What's easier? - Memorising Eng

Not really, memorising is nearly everything in language. If you don't even know the terms to communicate what can you do at all? What's easier? - Memorising English Grammar (even if you forgot an "s" somewhere everybody will still understand you) or memorising 3000+ characters? Sure, Chinese characters are beautiful (pretty much why I started learning Chinese) but they just aren't practical to communicate. Pinyin is just weird and became the main phonetic transcript probably (as many things in China) for political reasons rather than practical ones.