This is not analagous. The sound of every English word give clues – and often precise guidance - on how to write it, but the sound of a Chinese word typically offers no hint of how to write it. If you give me some obscure English word, say "persiflage", I might have no idea what it means, but I can probably spell it. But if you give a Chinese speaker 馘 (góu) in context, almost no one will be able to write it, even if they know the precise meaning ("to cut off the left ear of the slain").