Pretty sure you need to learn more than 2000 English words at a minimum too. The only difference is that instead of learning the 1-dimensional arrangement of letters, you learn the 2-dimensional arrangement of radicals.
No, you also have to learn the sounds of the words so that you can speak them, and then most of the characters have multiple sounds used in different places, and they place multiple characters together for a lot of words.
It's a lot more complex than just using letters, which is something they can also do.
Each one has more than 1 reading, a particular stroke order, and many other things.