The chinese kinda did just make a character for each word though.
Modern chinese uses plenty of words with multiple characters but Old chinese didn't really. So character = word was much closer to the truth around the time of the oracle bone inscriptions.
FishFace@piefed.social 1 day ago
OK, but if we’re talking about origins then the Latin script ultimately descends from Egyptian hieroglyphics, which were also originally pictographic, hence 1:1 symbol:word (but evolved and so were much more complicated than just pictographs when they stopped being used)
Hegar@fedia.io 1 day ago
At it's origins, the Latin script was an alphabet, not 1:1 symbol to word.
You have to go back through a chain of different scripts for different languages from different cultures that influenced it to get to heiroglyphs.
Chinese characters were logograms invented for Chinese and are logograms used for Chinese today. At their origin they were pretty much symbol = word and it mostly still is.
FishFace@piefed.social 1 day ago
Logograms like Chinese characters are not 1:1 symbol to word; they stand for morphemes, not words. Some words are morphemes, but most words consist of more than one.
Chinese script evolved from a pictographic script, just as the Latin script evolved from a pictographic script. You have to go through a chain in either case.