Actually, this is not quite acturate. Languages tend to change most in isolation. That's why in places like central Africa and Papua New Guinea you have hundreds of very different languages within very small areas. With the rise of electronic communication, and especially the web, it seems likely that the rate of change in English will be a lot slower, since its used so widely.
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.
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Doesn't anyone remember Cold Fusion? NASA is doing exactly the right thing by delaying their PR until they've published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Actually, this is not quite acturate. Languages tend to change most in isolation. That's why in places like central Africa and Papua New Guinea you have hundreds of very different languages within very small areas. With the rise of electronic communication, and especially the web, it seems likely that the rate of change in English will be a lot slower, since its used so widely.
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.