It's worse than that. As anyone who's had to explain to a Londoner that that the only rs in the bath are the speaker's, can attest.
That being said. Phonics in reading is a major red herring fostered by resurgent Behaviourist educationalists.
All the investigations of how we actually process text demonstrate that we don't scan letters consecutively. We dot around the text area, we take visual and phonetic cues and process them cognitively - using our knowledge of language to anticipate words in context. And our brain's ability to recreate a meaningful and apparently coherent perception. The way we do with all visual processing.
We use phonics when we're stuck ( as with a name or a word we've never met before in our usage, such as technical language).
Spelling, similarly, only uses phonics when we don't have a clue ( such as a related word). Mostly we don't spell words at all, using muscle memory and visual imaging. It's why if we misspell a word we see the discrepancy and can often focus in on the location of the error, or even write words to find out how to spell them. Also it's why we can find words in word searches etc.,
Biting the hand that feeds IT
