“I” before “E” .…OMG people!

A word about the i before e rule. Hope­fully without rage.

Much is made of the rule i before e except after c. There are all these memes that then go on ad nau­seum about how there are so many excep­tions to this rule that it’s a stu­pid rule and it’s all a lie.

Nope sorry, I can­’t do it. There will be rage.

For instance:

i before e

Except when your for­eign neigh­bour Keith receives eight coun­ter­feit beige sleighs from feisty caf­fein­ated weight­lift­ers. Weird.

Or

i before e unless you leis­urely deceive eight over­weight heirs to for­feit their sov­er­eign conceits.

Oh, and this one

i before e except after c unless the effi­cient con­ci­erge of the pri­ci­est Ancient Gla­ci­er Hacienda serves a soci­ety of pro­fi­cient sci­ent­ists study­ing a spe­cies with insuf­fi­cient con­sciences lead­ing to raci­er pir­acies. Lunacies.

I saw a meme that said There are 923 words that break the i before e rule. Only 44 words that actu­ally fol­low that rule.

WRONG

See? Rage. Just think­ing about it fills me with rage. I am going to try to explain this calmly.

You can­’t just take part of the rule, ignore the rest, and then make a frickin’ scene about how inac­cur­ate it is.

First things first. This rule is NOT to do with every single time you see i and e in a word. This rule is ONLY applied when the vow­el com­bin­a­tion makes the long ee sound. So don’t even think about this rule if you don’t hear that ee. So we are talk­ing about words like receive (after c) versus the word believe (after l)

Secondly, you have to pay atten­tion to the rule in its entirety, you can­’t just ignore the last half. The whole rule is this: i before e except after c, unless it says A as in neigh­bour and weigh.

There ARE a few excep­tions such as weird, seize and leis­ure (which, if you’re Brit­ish is often pro­nounced “leh­sure,” so… that one goes out the window).

See, some people (like even Mer­ri­am Web­ster online), try to tell us that words like for­feit, albeit, gla­ci­er and defi­cien­cies are excep­tions to the rule, but they are NOT excep­tions to this rule, they are dif­fer­ent rules. Oh my god it makes me so mad!

It is so much sim­pler than all these memes would have us believe, and it does a dis­ser­vice by con­fus­ing people and makes them want to give up.

Let’s break it down.

In that first meme:

Except when your for­eign neigh­bour Keith receives eight coun­ter­feit beige sleighs from feisty caf­fein­ated weight­lift­ers. Weird.

-neigh­bour, eight, beige, sleighs, weight­lift­ers are all long A sounds. the last half of the i before e rule applies.

- for­eign, coun­ter­feit, and feisty clearly do not make either the long ee sound, nor the long A sound, there­fore the rule does not apply.

- receives fol­lows the rule.

- caf­fein­ated… the root word is caf­feine. it and Weird are among the excep­tions to the rule.

That second meme

i before e unless you leis­urely deceive eight over­weight heirs to for­feit their sov­er­eign conceits.

This one has simply chosen to ignore even part two of the rule, the except after c part, coz deceive and con­ceits are fol­low­ing the rule exactly. There are the words eight and over­weight again, long A sound, and even sov­er­eign has a root word of reign, which… makes the A sound.

And that last one I mentioned?

i before e except after c unless the effi­cient con­ci­erge of the pri­ci­est Ancient Gla­ci­er Hacienda serves a soci­ety of pro­fi­cient sci­ent­ists study­ing a spe­cies with insuf­fi­cient con­sciences lead­ing to raci­er pir­acies. Lunacies.

ERRRRRRG!!!  That is just full of crap. The ONLY word in there that can be looked at with the i before e rule is the word “spe­cies” which is an excep­tion. Even pir­acies and lun­acies don’t apply because those are fol­low­ing a dif­fer­ent rule. (they are plur­al, and the sin­gu­lar ver­sions end in y. THAT is the rule change the y to and i and add es) Not one of those oth­er examples of ci com­bin­a­tions is mak­ing the long ee sound, so this meme is just crap, and isn’t the least bit humor­ous. It is NOT a tongue in cheek, “look how kooky the Eng­lish lan­guage is” thing, it’s just flat out wrong.

Now believe me, I under­stand all the foibles of the Eng­lish lan­guage. We have to deal with rough, dough, through and cough. Affect is the verb and effect is the noun, except when affect is the noun and effect is a verb.

But when there are rules, which work just fine. Let’s look at the word stop. If you’re going to add a suf­fix, you double the final con­son­ant and then add the suf­fix, right? So to add ‑ed to stop, you double the p and add ‑ed mak­ing… stopped.

So explain to me why there’s a product on the mar­ket they call Unstop­pables, but they did not double the p. It should be Un-stoh-pables, with a long <o>. It’s dumb.

I am also irrit­ated by people not under­stand­ing the dif­fer­ence between Less and Few­er. If you can count it, it’s few­er. If you can­’t, it’s Less. If you stick your head in a plastic bag you have access to less oxy­gen, and as a res­ult, few­er breaths will be avail­able to you! If you have less flour you can make few­er cook­ies. And if you drink less alco­hol before writ­ing, you will make few­er mistakes!

Oh! And anoth­er one that I hear all the time is, “Her and her friend did such and such.” NO! “SHE and her friend did the thing.”

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