Is learning foreign alphabets or scripts without learning the language itself purposeless?

Question by Sirius: Is learning foreign alphabets or scripts without learning the language itself purposeless?
Learn and know the Arabic alphabet. The Hebrew script. Cyrillic. Greek alphabet. But not bothering to learn the Arabic language, the Hebrew language, Russian, or Greek. Is it pointless?

Best answer:

Answer by ɑndrew
It’s not completely purposeless.

It’s interesting because you can recognize cognates and borrowings. It’s also useful because you will have a better idea of how the word is pronounced.

Take, for example, the Russian телефон. By knowing the Cyrillic alphabet you can easily see that the word is “telephone” even without knowing the Russian language. Likewise you can infer that the Greek γεωγραφία means geography.

Add your own answer in the comments!