Yes. That's a useful way to organize them. One small correction: Japanese isn't literally **50 × 2 different sounds**. Hiragana and katakana encode essentially the **same sound inventory** in two scripts. Also, the traditional *gojūon* (“50 sounds”) table has gaps, so modern basic kana are usually counted as **46 hiragana + 46 katakana**.

Here are the systems **one by one**, focusing on how their symbols relate to sound.

### 1. 🇬🇧 English — Latin alphabet

**26 letters**

**A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z**

English uses an alphabet: letters broadly represent consonants and vowels. But English spelling-to-sound correspondence is unusually irregular:

**A** → *cat, father, cake*
**G** → *go, giant*
**C** → *cat, city*

So knowing the alphabet doesn't automatically tell you how a word is pronounced.

---

### 2. 🇪🇸 Spanish — Latin alphabet + Ñ

**27 letters**

**A B C D E F G H I J K L M N Ñ O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z**

It looks almost identical to English, but you're right that the **sound system is distinctly Spanish**.

Some important examples:

| Letter  | Typical Spanish sound           | Example             |
| ------- | ------------------------------- | ------------------- |
| **J**   | strong /h/-like sound           | **j**amón           |
| **H**   | silent                          | **h**ola            |
| **Ñ**   | “ny”                            | ni**ñ**o            |
| **R**   | tongue tap/trill                | pe**r**o            |
| **RR**  | strong trill                    | pe**rr**o           |
| **V/B** | very similar sounds in Spanish  | **v**ino / **b**oca |
| **Z**   | /s/ or /θ/, depending on region | **z**apato          |

Spanish spelling is generally much more predictable than English spelling.

---

### 3. 🇩🇪 German — Latin alphabet + Ä Ö Ü ß

Basic alphabet:

**A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z**

Plus:

**Ä Ö Ü ß**

Again, the shapes look familiar, but several sounds behave very differently from English:

| German  | Approximate idea         |
| ------- | ------------------------ |
| **J**   | English **y**            |
| **W**   | English **v**            |
| **V**   | often English **f**      |
| **Z**   | **ts**                   |
| **CH**  | special German fricative |
| **SCH** | English **sh**           |
| **Ö**   | rounded front vowel      |
| **Ü**   | rounded front vowel      |
| **ß**   | **ss** sound             |

So **German W ≠ English W**, which is a classic beginner surprise.

---

### 4. ✡️ Hebrew — Semitic abjad

Now we make a much bigger jump.

**22 letters**, written **right → left**:

**א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט י כ ל מ נ ס ע פ צ ק ר ש ת**

Hebrew is traditionally classified as an **abjad**, meaning the writing system is fundamentally organized around **consonants**.

For example:

| Hebrew | Name  | Approx. sound |
| -----: | ----- | ------------- |
|      ב | bet   | b / v         |
|      ג | gimel | g             |
|      ד | dalet | d             |
|      כ | kaf   | k / kh        |
|      ל | lamed | l             |
|      מ | mem   | m             |
|      נ | nun   | n             |
|      ר | resh  | r             |
|      ש | shin  | sh / s        |
|      ת | tav   | t             |

Short vowels can be represented using **niqqud** marks:

**בָּ** etc.

But ordinary modern Hebrew is commonly written without most niqqud, so readers infer vowels from their knowledge of the word and context.

---

### 5. ☪️ Arabic — Semitic abjad

Arabic is related to Hebrew and uses a similar underlying idea.

**28 basic letters**, also **right → left**:

**ا ب ت ث ج ح خ د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ق ك ل م ن ه و ي**

You can even see historical/linguistic relationships in some letter names:

| Hebrew      | Arabic     | Sound relationship |
| ----------- | ---------- | ------------------ |
| ב **bet**   | ب **bāʾ**  | b                  |
| ד **dalet** | د **dāl**  | d                  |
| מ **mem**   | م **mīm**  | m                  |
| נ **nun**   | ن **nūn**  | n                  |
| ר **resh**  | ر **rāʾ**  | r                  |
| ש **shin**  | ش **shīn** | sh                 |

Arabic adds another visual complication: **letters usually connect**, and their shapes can change according to position.

For example, one letter:

**ب**

can appear as:

**بـ   ـبـ   ـب**

They're all **bāʾ**.

---

### 6. 🇯🇵 Japanese — now things get very different

Japanese combines **multiple writing systems**:

**Kanji + Hiragana + Katakana**

The phonetic part is **kana**.

#### Hiragana

**46 basic symbols**

**あ い う え お**
**か き く け こ**
**さ し す せ そ**
**た ち つ て と**
**な に ぬ ね の**
**は ひ ふ へ ほ**
**ま み む め も**
**や　ゆ　よ**
**ら り る れ ろ**
**わ　を**
**ん**

#### Katakana

The **same basic sounds**, different symbols:

**ア イ ウ エ オ**
**カ キ ク ケ コ**
**サ シ ス セ ソ**
**タ チ ツ テ ト**
**ナ ニ ヌ ネ ノ**
**ハ ヒ フ ヘ ホ**
**マ ミ ム メ モ**
**ヤ　ユ　ヨ**
**ラ リ ル レ ロ**
**ワ　ヲ**
**ン**

So:

**か = カ = ka**
**し = シ = shi**
**つ = ツ = tsu**
**ら = ラ = ra**

That's why I wouldn't think of Japanese as “92 sounds.” It's closer to:

> **one phonetic system written with two parallel sets of symbols.**

And then Japanese adds **kanji** on top of that.

---

### The big picture

You can arrange what we've studied almost like a progression:

**English / Spanish / German**
→ alphabetic, mostly individual consonants + vowels
→ same Latin ancestry, different pronunciation systems

**Hebrew / Arabic**
→ Semitic abjads
→ writing organized primarily around consonants
→ right-to-left

**Japanese kana**
→ syllabary-like/moraic system
→ **か = ka**, rather than separate **k + a** letters
→ two parallel scripts: hiragana + katakana

**Japanese kanji**
→ morphographic/logographic component
→ symbols primarily connect writing with meaningful units

And this connects directly to the distinction you were working out before: **writing systems can encode speech at different levels** — individual sounds, consonantal frameworks, morae/syllable-like units, or meaningful units. Japanese is particularly interesting because **several of these principles coexist in ordinary writing**.