>>41
Obviously Chinese has peculiarities because they don't have a standard phonetic alphabet (unlike Japanese), and they derive certain loanwords from pronounciation, but that isn't necessary, and it doesn't apply to Japanese.
I don't speak Cantonese but I can read it fairly well simply because I learned plenty of Kanji.
If you only spoke scottish gaelic yet knew how to read the alphabet, would you have a chance of understanding english?