[Zakiazigazi]

A lot of people think that and personally as someone fluent in Japanese (as a second, well rather something like fourth, language) I also sort of feel the same way. However if you look at it without the learned biases, there is a great example where a country with fairly similar language in terms of grammar and sounds that had used to use chinese characters switched to a phonetic alphabet and are not noticeably worse off for it: Korea.

[fenomas]

This has been brought up and replied to lots of places elsewhere on the page.