Comment Re: Why not Chinese-language characters? (Score 1) 93
Mostly no. There are a relatively small number of simple symbols that you could argue are pictures, such as "person", "fire", "field", "water". But almost all symbols are compounds: you scale/squash multiple simpler symbols then combine to form a new one.
Sometimes the compound pieces contribute just the pronunciation with nothing about meaning. So for example "mother" is "woman" + "horse" because "horse" has the desired pronunciation "ma", not for the meaning or to make a picture.