you can see scribbles

Yes there is

1 character = 1 word is efficient in its own right

but until you understand what sound each letters make

These people aren't living in a vacuum

you cant decipher them

Or more so phrase

They'd still be exposed on occasion to merchants, priests, lords, writings

The thing is that you only need a few words to get the gist

It's like background radiation

You pick and patch it up it's how the human brain works

no i mean

i guess you could. LLike its feasable that someone could read but not speak

hearing someone speaking a language

wont teach you to read that language

at all

until you learn how a letter sounds

Language is zipfian so if you learn the most common 1000 words you're literally good with 90% of words by usage

No but seeing a merchant point to something and say

Etc

point to what?

Like signs

You really think signage didn't exist?

how many signs do you think there were back then

Yes the average peasant was illiterate

roman milestones for example

didnt have words on them

they had numerals

But if you wanted very terrible spelling

thats an example of signage

but no words

You could get them to spell something out

I'll go find it you're reminding me of some history thing I watched that made me rethink history

The whole aspect of yes humans back then uneducated

But our brains are quite adaptable and psychology wasn't different back then on a base level

@Osbornia shad does quite a bit on the topic of the view that people back then were stupid, including on literacy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kISM2od3BJ0

Like a peasant that's had plenty of exposure to a trading port could probably identify basic stuff

They weren't stupid

People also inherently like and desire languages so attempting to establish communication over writing makes sense

Like the majority of China peasants

Not stupid