[Urbane Guerrilla]

The support for that point is not very strong, however; that is why I said at the very least -- it'll do that well, but that isn't the limit of its usefulness.

To make English spelling phonetically consistent a outrance will call for an alphabet of about forty characters -- something like, say, Unifon or Omniglot.

I'm a living example of the effectiveness of a course of phonics, Kingswood, even if you've never heard of it. My elementary school class got phonics, while my younger brothers' class a few years behind did not and it took their spelling a looong time to catch up with mine; basically we could spell, they couldn't. Not like us. Phonics is why I'm a good writer and copyeditor and tw, to cite an obvious example, is not.