Syllabaries are pretty useful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabary
Japanese Hiragana uses 46 symbols for example and Linear B uses 187 or 87 depending on your count.
One would need separate symbols for "bag", "beg", "big", "bog", "bug", "bad", "bed", "bid", "bod", "bud", "bead", "bide"...