I before E except after C, except … | Hacker News Reader

I before E except after C, except …

jawj.github.io

20 pointsgmac14 comments

English has what linguists call deep orthography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_depth. It has to do with the conservative nature of English spelling. English would rather maintain the same spelling for a word than have it accurately reflect the pronunciation. This makes English much harder to learn than languages with shallow orthography.

This is another reason why Esperanto remains a better international language than English. In Esperanto, each letter has exactly one sound, and there are no exceptions.

I remember from a junior high textbook (probably eighth grade) the expanded version

  I before E except after C
  And when sounded as A, as in "neighbor" and "weigh"

That leave some weird exceptions...

This is a stupid animated version but I remember Brian Regan had a bit about this. Always makes me laugh. haha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTPMmBQjlFQ

Bonus for plurals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXJjZjl6Y_4

Weird exceptions in first few words marked with @:

their @

being

eight

either @

height @

foreign @

neighborhood

weight

protein @

reign

eight

My weird foreign neighbor Keith received eight counterfeit beige sleighs from feisty caffeinated weightlifters.

My memory of the rule in 90s Australia schooling was

I before E,

except after C

When the sound is eee*

*[as in pee]

Though 'seizure' among others breaks this rule, lol

That rule cost me the 5th grade spelling bee. I lost on “forfeit”, appropriately.

I learned it with the additional phrase that was something like “and in words that sound like ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh’.

English is fun like that. Rules everywhere invented for the fun of being broken.

French has entered the chat...

We have "eaux" (waters) which sounds like a plain "o". A 4:1 ratio without even the proper letter inside.

We have rules for plurals that split the words 50/50 in the ones that follow the rule and the exceptions.

I always felt that out language books are a few pages rules and then exceptions. The traditional book for conjugation (verbs and their tenses) has one other for regular verbs (the ones you do not use that much), two or three for "less regular ones" and then it is mayhem. Multiplied by 22 tenses.

Nice to see a project using Mithril!

"I before E except for ~3000 words, many of which are common"

I dislike that people interpret this adage being violated as an example of English's inconsistency. The clearer conclusion is that it just isn't true.

I could say "every word in English starts with ß" and then point out that every single word violates this rule. What a crazy language!

But that would be silly. Not because English is crazy, but because that obviously isn't true.

The ability to describe a language with useful and concise rules make a language easier to understand and learn. I think this serves as a perfectly reasonable metric for how "crazy" or consistent a natural language is. What other definition of consistency would matter to anyone?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com