> They’re as fundamental to mathematics as the alphabet is to language. “If I know Cyrillic, do I know Russian?” said Fabrizio Bianchi (opens a new tab), a mathematician at the University of Pisa in Italy. “No. But try to learn Russian without learning Cyrillic.”

Something's gone badly wrong here. "Without learning Cyrillic" is the normal way to learn Russian. Pick a slightly less prominent language and 100% of learners will do it without learning anything about the writing system.

I thought the same - many languages don't have a writing system and children learn without being able to write. But that's beside the point; the point is just as valid even if the analogy is poor.