It seems like the more apt comparison would be between Chinese and Russian or Arabic. New alphabet, little-to-no cognates, but still phonetic. In an all-langu

It seems like the more apt comparison would be between Chinese and Russian or Arabic. New alphabet, little-to-no cognates, but still phonetic. In an all-languages-are-equal world, an English speaker would have equally difficult times learning any of those; I wonder how it goes in practice.