This is not a problem in other languages. The word "set" in English has 7 different meanings, yet you rarely struggle to tell which is intended. If the language can be understood when spoken, it can be understood when written phonetically.
> If this [writing tones] was so easy, pinyin (a standardized writing) would have replaced characters decades ago!
Which is saying that the reason Pinyin has not replaced traditional characters because it cannot accurately transcribe Chinese speech.
Easy to understand for a fluent speaker, but a learner might struggle.
We saw back when we had keypad phones, the youth would write "txt" speak because it was faster to type with 10 digits. I'm pretty sure there was a decline in literacy rate around this time, the youth struggled with spelling because they wrote rarely, but texted frequently. Smartphones fixed that problem, because they provide the full keyboard and auto-correct.
My guess is, if you took the tones out of pinyin, then a generation or two later there would be less literacy. Children would struggle to add the tones even though they know how to speak the word. Writing already contains far less information than speech. Over several more generations, the speech could even change because the written word has lost the tonal information. Compared to the past, we read far more, speak less, and write even less, and most writing has been replaced by typing.
> mchncl lmt xsts t th wdth f sngl xhst prt, t bt 62% f th br dmtr fr rsnbl pstn rng lf.
> Th rd vlv s smpl bt ffctv frm f chck vlv
That's just from a Wikipedia page I have open from earlier. Already quite a bit harder to decipher.
I wonder if there is any evidence of that other than boomers complaining about it.
>Over several more generations, the speech could even change because the written word has lost the tonal information.
That happens automatically with every language already. It's not like a race to the bottom where suddenly no one knows how to communicate though.
>Compared to the past, we read far more, speak less, and write even less, and most writing has been replaced by typing.
That's not necessarily a bad thing.
I don't have a dog in this fight one way or the other, but it really is surprising that all these pro-kanji comments seem to ignore the concept of context altogether. It's very circular reasoning being used to try and explain why kanji are necessary.