Why do we teach this to children?
I before E
Except after C
And when sounded like A
As in neighbor and weigh
.... with just a few exceptions: sleight, seismic, height, kaleidoscope, keister, obeisance, heinous, caffeine, weird, their, heist, deity, Fahrenheit, feisty, either, protein, foreign, reïnforce, leisure, seize, conscience, science, society, ancient, sufficient, species, financier, efficient, concierge, forfeit ....
3 comments:
It could be argued that conscience and ancient employ the i as a device to modify the preceding consonants, that their and deity are properly pronounced with a long a, that weird and protein used to be pronounced with a long a, that science and society employ the i as a long i, that Fahrenheit is a foreign name, and that either is simply a freak occurrence, but the truth is that standardized spelling in the English language is a mess, and all attempts to teach it are simply kludges. Cf. Samuel Webster, hack and language fascist.
It looks like maybe you're ignoring the "except after C" part.
Sharp eye, Anon. I included a few items from another list which proved to contain a few words which obeyed the “cei” rule.
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