[Lonesome in Massachussets]

We read words the way the Chinese read ideograms. Once you are familiar with a word, you recognize its pattern, and common words are easily read, even if distorted. We all sight read. Phonics, or sounding out, is a bridge, it allows us to quickly “decode” new words, and is the main advantage of a phonetic alphabet over ideograms, we can more easily recognize and assimilate new or unfamiliar words.

Try the trick above using unfamiliar words like “extirpate”, or “ineluctable” and the results will be quite different.

[knarf]

Thanks ... that makes sense