<grin>
One of the great things about having bothered to learnt the Cyrillic alphabet when at college is that now with a tiny bit of Czech (which uses the Roman alphabet so is a bit easier) I get a bit of an 'in' into Russian without much extra effort. I'm all for short cuts me....
One day I probably ought to actually learn that Vilani alphabet. I wonder how many 'related' Known Universe languages that would give a bit of an aid to learning. (And yes, I know I've mixed language and alphabet in that thought, but i think you know what I mean!)
tc