I am not sure. It would not surprise me though. As an American, we are always striving to turn the most mundane activities into competitions for some reason...

For what it is worth, I also think British English is more consistent than American English in pronunciation.

For example, you all pronounce "Zebra" like "Zeh-bra" and "Zeppelin" like "Zehp-pellin" if I am not mistaken.

American English, where I live, would say "Zee-bra" and 'Zehp-uh-lin." for no good reason. Fundamentally, I think that was also my issue with phonics. So many spoken words have more complex sounds replaced with shorter sounds like "uh", "un", "in", "an", "oh", etc..

Simple words like:

Definitely => "Def-in-ut-ly"

Interesting => "In-tra-sting"

etc..

> As mentioned in the article, I still occasionally use the technique if and when I come across an unknown word.

Don't get me wrong, I do too, but even as an adult, it's usually the words with French etymologies that burn me.

Trivial example would be "resume" (like applying for a job -- yes, Americans often drop the accent on the 'e'). No way sounding out the word would have mapped to "Rez-oo-may" without previous knowledge. Somehow 'Receipt' => "Re-seat", "Debt" => "Deht", "Motion" => "Mo-shun", and so on.

I think phonetics of germanic words: hunger, anger, hack, ball, etc. are far more consistent.