Nick Sabalausky wrote:
That's one thing that's kind of nice about Japanese. Native words and loanwords are written in different alphabets (sort of like uppercase vs lowercase), so unlike English, you generally know if a word is a properly-pronounced native word or a potentially-differently-pronounced loanword. (Not that this is necessarily the original reason for the separate native/foreign alphabets, but it's at least a nice benefit.)
I don't see having 3 alphabets as having some sort of compelling advantage that remotely compares with the cost of learning 3 alphabets and 3 spellings for everything.
