why do the chinese require so many symbols to express their language?

Answer 1

Depending on how you look at it, if by symbols, you mean the characters; the equivalent thing in English would be the vocabularies. There are a lot of English vocabularies too, probably not any less than the amount of Chinese characters. In this sense, you can also say that it takes a lot of words to express their feelings in English.

However, if by symbols, you mean the strokes that make up a character; the equivalent thing in English would be the alphabets. There are 26 alphabets in English but there aren't 26 differents strokes in Chinese characters. So, in this sense, it is not as complicated in Chinese as it is in English.

Answer 2

depends on how you look at it. The english alphabet are symbols too. If by careful analysis, you will find that the chinese alphabet are simplier than the english one, and thus easier to learn. Some would just require an additional few general strokes to signify a word denoting an object when its being related to water, for instance. Most chinese characters are reductionsitic symbols of pictures of the objects they symbolize, like the characters for horse and door. They were formed from pictures of the real objects. On the other hand, the english alphabet is more complicated: the word "face" has totally no resemblance to the real object.

Answer 3

Becuz it's a pictograph language, whereas the Roman alphabet is based on phonetics.

Answer 4

But nowadays the words are all simplified already.