I’ve read that the spelling mnemonic “I before E except after C” is a useless rule “best forgotten.”
I beg to differ.
English vocabulary abounds with words borrowed from other languages, along with foreign spelling conventions. Any spelling rule we can come up with is certain to have exceptions. Nevertheless, spelling rules are worth learning because they provide a framework that makes the exceptions stand out. The “I before E” rule may not be perfect, but it is extremely useful.
First, the “I before E” mnemonic in its entirety:
I before E,
Except after C,
And when sounded like A
As in neighbor and weigh.
Let’s see how far this rule will take us with common words.
I before E
achieve
believe
belief
brief
chief
die
field
fierce
friend
lie
lingerie
niece
pie
piece
pierce
prairie
priest
siege
Except after C
ceiling
conceit
conceive
deceive
receipt
receive
perceive
And when sounded like A,
as in neighbor and weigh
heir
neighbor
reign
rein
skein
surveillance
their
veil
vein
weigh
Note: The words their and heir can be learned with this list. For one thing, the learner can associate their with they, which is pronounced with long a. For another, their is one of those high-frequency words that anyone who reads and writes at all should be able to master by completion of second grade. Heir can be learned with the mnemonic device of a “spelling pronunciation” that addresses the silent h as well as the ei spelling.
Exceptions to the Rule
caffeine
counterfeit
either
forfeit
foreign
heifer
leisure
neither
sovereign
seized
weird
This list of 46 words is by no means exhaustive, but it’s a fair gauge of how far the old jingle can take you in spelling the ie/ei words you are most likely to want to write.
I agree: the rule “i before e except after c” is a great starting point.
Then it is curious that we have such spellings as “Pierce” and “Peirce”, and the odd spelling of “Keibler” (which ought to be “Kiebler”), and the endless confusion between “Wiener” and “Weiner”.
“Feinstein” gives you the correct pronunciation in German because “ei” has the sound of a long “I” in German. Likewise to the word “nein”, which is familiar to many English speakers, but “rein”, “reign”, and “vein” are not pronounced that way in Engish. “Wein” sounds just like “wine”, and they mean the same thing.
A lot of the confusion (in English) comes from the fact that in German (and presumably Anglo-Saxon), the combinations “ei” and “ie” have distinct vowel sounds that are always used.
In a few irregular verbs in German, this difference appears in the conjugation. For example “bleiben” (to remain) changes to “blieben” in some of the conjugated forms, and the vowel sound does change.
Hence, these verbs fall into the same category as {sing, sang, sung}. That is is an interesting irregular verb because its three principal parts are nearly the same in German: {singen, sang, gesungen}. Thus, “sang” is exactly the same in both languages. Also, for past participles, the prefix “ge” vanished in English over 400 years ago.
Not all German verbs take this prefix, but most of them still do.
D.A.W.
Some of your suggestions under ‘when sounded as A’ sound strange.
On this side of the pond, ‘heir’ and ‘their’ rhyme with air, not a long A. And while ‘sovereign’ may seem like an exception, its root is ‘reign’ after all.
Dale’s comments are interesting. Unfortunately English pronunciations, unlike German, go their own merry way without thought to our spelling rules!
@Ian … truthfully, the root of sovereign isn’t ‘reign’: from Old French soverain, based on Latin super ‘above’ The change in the ending was due to association with reign.
Once again, it all points to the need for more spelling reforms. It seems that we hav at least 10 ways of spelling the ā vowel:
Inveighing in the same vein, the great broad-gauged dictator made it plain that during his reign the way to stay out of jail was to obey without feigning and pay without complaining.
Here a, a-e, ai, au, ay, ea, ei, eig, eigh, and ey are all said alike. It is hard to imagine how any system of spelling cood be worse.
I was taught the rule as “I before E except after C or before GH”. The last part handles many cases otherwise viewed as exceptions.
Ian,
“Their” and “heir” are not pronounced with an A sound in American English either. My note about teaching them with the “neighbor/weigh” list was inadvertently dropped from the post. They are words to be taught with the help of mnemonics. “Their” can be associated with “they,” which is pronounced with the A sound. The silent “h” in “heir” must be pointed out anyway, so a silly spelling pronunciation can be used to help the learner remember the spelling of this “ei” word.
R.E.,
I think that teaching the combination “eight” as “four-letter A” is the easiest approach.
I’ve always wanted to know, are there other mnemonic rules like this one, for spelling conventions or what have you? This is the only one of this sort I’ve heard of…
GRRRRR
Not “eight” (wretched automatic spelling corrections-they drive me wild! Especially when I’m trying to create a spelling exercise!
Four-letter EIGH.
Anwulf,
Too much energy is wasted complaining about English spelling. Yes, it is more challenging than that of other modern languages, but English grammar is far easier; think of extra time learning to spell as a trade-off for not having to make nouns and adjectives agree in gender. Besides, nobody has to learn to spell all the words in English–only the ones they use.
“Feinstein” gives you the correct pronunciation in German because “ei” has the sound of a long “I” in German…”Wein” sounds just like “wine”, and they mean the same thing.
A lot of the confusion (in English) comes from the fact that in German…
DAW: Best not to over-equate English and German. Their respective spelling traditions have little to do with each other. Wein doesn’t “sound just like wine”. It isn’t pronounced Vine, as it would be in German. Feinstein, e.g. may happen to be pronounced as it is in German (or Yiddish) but that is purely accidental. Likewise Wiener, Weiner, Epstein, Friedman, Freidman, etc. which are all pronounced randomly and inconsistently with EYE or EE sounds. All that reflects is their subjective Anglicizations. German pronunciation, like others, hasn’t been faithfully duplicated in English. And in any case, proper names are often exempted from “rules” of spelling even in their native languages.
Maeve and AnWulf: I agree with MM that far too much is made of the “chaotic” nature (mayhem, maybe?) of English spelling. It is actually not nearly as rule-less as most people think, but the rules are not taught in modern “educational” institutions. In other recent posts here, e.g.; the hard vs soft G, the hard vs soft C, the sound of Q in English, the cited rules are relevant to spelling as much as to pronunciation. The old canard that, GHOTI could spell FISH is undone when one realizes that 1) GH never makes an F sound at the beginning of a word and 2) TI never makes an SH sound at the end of one. As for the O, that is nearly unique to the word “women” and I don’t think you could find any language whose orthography/pronuncation had no exceptions.
The list of exceptions is too short – two of the most common rule violations are science (my favorite class all through school) and height (part of the name of the street I grew up on). I still have trouble with ie and ei.
@wes: True, height shares its affliction with sleight and not much else; probably not enough for a rule of any kind (there is a Scottish English word “skeigh” pronounced as “skeek” so even another sound for ei, but that is reaching). EI digraphs are not as common as IEs, and there are exceptions like you mention. Fittingly, weird is another one.
But with science you don’t really have an exception. There the I and the E are not forming one sound but are being separately pronounced. When the vowel sound made by an I is immediately followed by an E letter and sound– 2 distinct vowels in a row– you don’t really have an IE combination (digraph). You just have an E that happens to follow an I. So: pliers, flier, drier, glacier, financier, etc.
The spelling mnemonic “I before E except after C” IS a useless rule. If someone really takes this rule to heart, it will interfere with their remembering how to spell.
The better simpler rule is Just: “cei” instead of “cie”
“cie” is always wrong.
Simple.
Sorry Shing, but if that rule were the case then there’d be no science! I understand there is a lot of confusion about the rule, as there is confusion about a lot of spelling rules. The thing that needs to remembered however is that, yes there will always be exceptions to the rules, but as someone else alluded to, these are generally due to the word’s derivations. I teach my classes spelling rules as I’ve found it helps to learn the majority of rules. As a person with dyslexia, I’ve found them very helpful to me also.
I an so surprised that no one learned the rhyme the way we learned it in school: I before E, except after C, or when followed by G.
Of course, it looks like the G part only includes some of the words where there is an A sound, like weigh and neighbor.
However, this is the way we learned it in school and it was helpful, but there are so many exceptions.
Let’s face it, with so many exceptions is the rule that productive? What’s the purpose of a rule if it applies less than the majority of instances. It doesn’t matter how you explain the exceptions as the idea of a rule is that it should a helpful instruction and bring understanding and clarity where there is none.
It was recently tweeted ‘@uberfacts: There are 923 words in the English language that break the “I before E” rule. Only 44 words actually follow that rule.’
I before e, has been completly looked into way too much. I believe it was never a rule but a guideline of speaking, reading, and writing. It was created for a person to remember inase it would be spelled different. I absolutly loved the saying but disagree that this was ever to be taken to the level of kicking it down. In fact, for as many people to remember and has retained that saying, easily know sound differences in words exist. Also i believe people should also remember
Hello, “i before e except after c” has been misused by the public eye. It has been considered a rule, which in fact is a guideline. Its a way of remembering differences in words. I grew up and thought this was a great way to remember. I can also say because of this alot of people did research to kick it down. Jokes on all people who consider this to be wrong. Its not only helpful and cheeky, but hasn’t the world now learned alot. Wow how educational it still is. Thank you for your time.