"I" Before "E," Except After "C"

"I" Before "E," Except After "C."

Who comes up with these weird English rules? No wonder English is one of the most difficult languages to learn!

Float your complaints and/or praise.

Rule? Ha. Half the time it breaks it.

Veil. Weight. Height. Seizure. Neighbour. Vein. Sleigh. Freight. Eight. Seize. Either. Weird. Foreign. Leisure. Neither.

And look! I is before E after C! Science. Species. Sufficient. Conscience.

Hardly a rule at all. Maybe like the "don't burn games" rule, in that it may be a rule but nobody follows it.

Another english thing that bugs me is the letter 'C'. There is absolutely NO need for it, it's soft sound is a 's' and it's hard sound is a 'k'. It's just there to make spelling harder!

One that always bothered me was how you should always use "AN" instead of "A" when used in front of a vowel. Yet...
-Herb starts with an H but we don't say A HERB
-One starts with a vowel but if we roll a die and we get one we say i rolled A ONE

Teachers should say use AN in front of a vowel sound.

Not to mention the difference between C and K. Why not just scrap C completely and have S be the equivalent of the soft C?

Phew, that felt good.

Originally Posted by Fadock

One that always bothered me was how you should always use "AN" instead of "A" when used in front of a vowel. Yet...
-Herb starts with an H but we don't say A HERB
-One starts with a vowel but if we roll a die and we get one we say i rolled A ONE

It depends how you pronounce it. I do say "a herb", because I pronounce herb with a "H", rather than saying "an erb"

And One, has a W sound starting it. Wun.

Yeah, I don't know why the even teach that "rule".

English is the most difficult language to learn, which may be partly why we have so many immigrants around the USA that apply for jobs before being able to speak fluent English.

Though speaking and writing are different things altogether.

stupid rules.

q is always followed by a u, well that's wrong by far, go ask the people of Qatar.



ok, so that isn't a english word.

I before E, except after C.
Except in the word their and a million other words.

The C is there to look pretty, obviously.

Another english thing that bugs me is the letter 'C'. There is absolutely NO need for it, it's soft sound is a 's' and it's hard sound is a 'k'. It's just there to make spelling harder!

The C is there to look pretty, obviously.

I say we replace it with a whole new sound.

...the base chord from 'Smoke on the Water', f'rinstance. Will make pronunciation much more interesting.

English is like many other languages. It makes a rule, then it has a rule for those which break the rule, and then it has words which are generally unpleasant and don't obey any rule but themselves.

It's an anarchy, it really is.

I don't think English is the most difficult language to learn. There are other languages like Polish that would take that spot.

I like the letter "C". I want to keep it!

You know... you're all forgetting the second half of this rule.

"I before E, except after C...

Or in sounding like A, as in neighbor and weigh."

Originally Posted by southern belle

You know... you're all forgetting the second half of this rule.

"I before E, except after C...

Or in sounding like A, as in neighbor and weigh."

Yeah, that covers a few out of the many other words.

q is always followed by a u, well that's wrong by far, go ask the people of Qatar.

Go look in the dictionary. Not a single word starting with Q that's not followed by U. Which makes it very hard to use that letter when playing scrabble or bananagrams. They might as well just drop the U and make Qu simply be the letter Q. Much simpler that way.

Anyways, I generally like the english language. All you gotta do is know how to spell and all the stupid rules don't matter at all.

Originally Posted by Sir Awkin

...the base chord from 'Smoke on the Water', f'rinstance. Will make pronunciation much more interesting.

I love that song! ^_^

Originally Posted by Dog Dog 123

Anyways, I generally like the english language. All you gotta do is know how to spell and all the stupid rules don't matter at all.

Quoted for truth. The best way to improve your spelling is to read a lot, methinks. During vocabulary tests, you would also be graded for the spelling. This was a good thing for me. I knew I would never completely bomb the test because I could fall back on my near-perfect spelling skills.

The same goes for grammar and mechanics. Since reading has been big with me all my life, I can easily do well with writing. Where the comma goes, etcetera. But, when someone asks me why I do it, I cannot answer aside from "because it supposed to look that way." I can't pinpoint the rule that goes with it. ^_^'