Re:Practice people, sheesh. (Score 1)

The problem with a phonics-based keyboard is that English spelling is not a phonetic system --- it's what is called `morphophonemic', where individual morphemes (smallest units of meaning) are spelled consistently though their pronunciation often depends on context. For example, the `-s' at the end of `cats' and `dogs' is two different sounds. We spell it the same way because it means the same thing: plural.

The rest of the oft-cited difficulties of English spelling are leftovers from several centuries of changes in the way we pronounce words (e.g. we used to say `light' more or less the same as the German `licht', and vowels have changed a lot), as well as quite a bit of borrowing from other languages. However, the system is still quite consistent and rule-based.

See Wier, Ruth and Venesky, ``English orthography: more reason than rhyme'', in The psycholoinguistic nature of the reading process, K. Goodman, ed. Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1968. pp. 189-199.