Talk:I before E except after C

Friends this is not the entire rhyming rule, and wikipedia should be accurate and reliable. The full rule is: "I before E, except after C or when sounded as A, as in neighbor and weigh.." This is how I learned it in school, and can be googled to find it as well. When you use the whole rhyming rule there are very very few exceptions. Yes some, but extremely few. Peace. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.234.189.43 (talk) 16:03, 21 September 2023 (UTC)


 * There are a number of variants. My favourite is, "To make the sound 'ee', I before E except after C." which has precisely 3 English exceptions, 'weird', 'seize' and 'foreign' plus derived forms. All other exceptions are either foreign words that have been imported with their original spelling or are proper names. Please note that words such as 'specie' are not exceptions. (The rhyme says ie except after c. It does not say ei after c.) Unfortunately there are too many people with a vested interest (either comedic or scholarly reputation) to allow the real rhyme, correctly read, to be allowed to stand. OrewaTel (talk) 10:03, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Correction
I before e, except after c is a lie. Don't listen to anyone. What happened to the word efficiency? Isn't that supposed to ba an e, then and I? even after a long dicussion I fucked up

In the Examples I would Like to point out that "Ceilidh" is not an English word it is a Gaelic word meaning "informal gathering" much like a gathering of friends to sing music and have fun. but still it is not an english word, if this is a mnemonic guidline for english dont give Gaelic words as Examples!!!!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:CA:4300:50B0:8D75:A654:1097:8755 (talk) 09:21, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm very much afraid that the mnemonic has not been recited correctly.

The rule is:

"I before e except after c, when the sound is EE"

Now it makes sense! There are three exceptions to this, weird and species being two, but I can't attempt to edit this entry as most of it would need to be deleted as it is based on an erroneous quote. Weeabi (talk) 13:26, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Other Exceptions
their, I am not sure where it would go on the main page because I don't know what all those funky letter sound things mean. --70.7.189.110 14:52, 13 June 2007 (UTC) feisty 67.6.58.29 (talk) 03:23, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Do people agree on these, and should we add them to the page?67.6.58.29 (talk) 03:23, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

"their" fits the 'long A' sound exclusion sub-rule. The name Keith is the only exception I can think of that doesn't fit the 'long A' exclusion / 'long E' inclusion sub-rules. Now watch wikipedia double-sign my post. :) Darr247 (talk) 17:40, 5 July 2016 (UTC) Darr247 (talk) 17:40, 5 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Have you read the article? See the strictest exceptions. jnestorius(talk) 12:08, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Better rule
"I before E, except for the exceptions" – Ronan Pitterman 10:18, 2 September 2006


 * LOL "Pitterman, that was funny." – WikiGuest 19:53, 14 November 2006

"I before E, except after C or if it starts with H or ends in N G." or actually "I before E or just check in the dictionary" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.221.15.212 (talk) 19:26, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Better yet: i before e, except when it's e before i.

betaneptune —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.105.186.199 (talk) 04:15, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Not Funny
I am editing the claim of humourous effect in the Canadian Hyundai commercial. It is not funny. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.114.132.151 (talk • contribs) 12:51, 30 October 2006

achievement removed
I removed 'achievement' since the 'ie' comes after h, not c (it's also not listed with the exceptions). JAL 10:05, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Exception mnemonic
I learned the rule with the following addendum to cover the exceptions:
 * “Neither leisured foreigner seized the weird height.”

A search on Google shows numerous hits for pages with this sentence. —MJBurrage • TALK  • 23:01, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

New line
I came up with this added a line a few years ago that covers some of the exceptions most commonly mixed up: i before e except after c or when sounding like a as in neighbor and weigh or if you're plain weird or just foreign I don't know if it should be added or not. I'll leave that up to those who deal with this page more often.

--MathStuf 03:22, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I was taught this variant and I believe it is worthy of inclusion as it covers a wide range of exceptions. I am pretty sure this variant is easily sourceable, however I am unsure at the moment if the title of the article should be changed and I will try to give this some thought in the near future. Any other thoughts?
 * Incidentally, I was also taught a mnemonic for several exceptions which I will add to the appropriate section.
 * -Thibbs (talk) 12:49, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Memonics and citations
People have gone citation-happy around here lately. If you know of a mnemonic that can help people and add it, that's not WP:OR, that's original composition, which is what Wikipedia is all about. What you can not do, according to WP:OR, is claim that it's part of the original mnemonic that is widely known and easily citable.

Imagine if I was writing an article about haikus, and I said Haikus have a 5-7-5 syllable structure, such as "Wikipedians / who go citation crazy / need to find some help." It's a fact that that haiku has the correct structure. I don't need to cite the poem, as I composed it. It's not original research, as it isn't an interpretation of what a haiku is; I'm not claiming it's a good haiku (and it most certainly isn't); I'm not claiming that it's a published or well-known poem.

I wish people would pour their citation-tagging efforts into the claims made in historical articles rather than nit-picking and putting citations on things that don't need to be looked up to be verified. If it's a haiku (or a mnemonic) then it is one, and you don't need a publishable source to verify that it is that thing. 154.20.48.244 07:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Original Research is not the only exclusion criterion. Another criterion is WP:NOTABILITY.   If you make up a mnemonic it is not notable.  Giving examples of mnemonics is appropriate in the mnemonic article, as giving examples of haiku is in the haiku article (leaving aside the separate question of when a made-up example is appropriate).  But making up a mnemonic in this article is as inappropriate as making up a  haiku (write i before e / works for most words in English / except after c).   See also WP:NOT:
 * "Instruction manuals. While Wikipedia has descriptions of people, places, and things, Wikipedia articles should not include instructions or advice (legal, medical, or otherwise), suggestions, or contain "how-to"s. This includes tutorials, walk-throughs, instruction manuals, video game guides, and recipes."
 * A mnemonic is a species of "how-to", unless it is notable in its own right (as, for example, "i before e except after c" is). Since you found the citation tag confusing, I have deleted all mnemonics and will continue to do so unless proof of notability is provided via a citation. jnestorius(talk) 17:01, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Once again, process trumps content. Congratulations on making the article less useful to someone trying to pass a spelling test. Why is it WP:IAR seems to be the only rule people are willing to ignore?
 * The spirit of the "Instruction manuals" section is clearly to prevent things like an article on a video game from containing a 300kb complete walkthrough of the game, not a one-line mnemonic. Those who ignore WP:IAR however, seem to lack the grasp on subtlety and common sense that is required to see that. 154.20.48.244 23:58, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * If you disagree with the prohibition on instruction manuals, take it up at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not. If you want to add something useful for a spelling test, add it at Wikibooks (perhaps in English/Spelling) and by all means cross-link your work from this article.  Whether an incomplete list of exceptions is actually helpful is another question; my common sense does not seem to agree with yours on this. jnestorius(talk) 14:38, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I know its real late but it would be irresponcable to not point out you proved his point for him --71.131.27.5 (talk) 03:22, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

An other variant, perhaps
I've never heard the "or when sounding like a, as in neighbor and weigh" bit before. My mom always recited it "i before e, except after c, except in words, like receive". Am I the only one to have ever head this variant? Gus 08:59, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

mmm whatcha say mmm that you only meant well well of course you did mmm whatcha say mmm that its all for the best of course it is —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.177.77.202 (talk) 01:55, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

And another variant
The one I was taught is:

"I before e except after c and only be if it rhymes with me."

The other variants seems to dance around the idea of listing ALL the exceptions or giving examples so I thought I'd add this one, which seems to work relatively well save with words such as seize or species; but it works with the other examples listed in the introduction - science, sufficient, weird, vein. Trimethylxanthine 20:26, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

==

Many exceptions are easy:

science, sufficient, species, being, freeing:

The "except after c" should instead be "Use 'cei' when pronounced 'see' and 'cie' when pronounced 'sh'. The 'i' makes the 'c' a 'sh'. This explains "sufficient" and "species."

What makes "science" easy is the fact that it contains two syllables: sci-ence. Would anyone read "sceince" and expect it to be pronounced sigh-ens? This two-syllable rule also applies to "being" and "freeing" and the like. And it overrides the 'cei' rule, but it's still easy.

Or more simply: science, being, freeing, seeing, fleeing -- Each contains 2 syllables. Treat each syllable separately, as if it were isolated.

species, sufficient, conscience -- 'ie' after 'c' so as to make c be pronounced as 'sh' instead of 'see', which would be 'ei' after 'c'.

"Weird" almost *has* to be an exception, and "foreign" too. Easy!

Plurals with y --> ies: fancies, legacies, consistencies, contingencies, lunacies, prophecies, etc.

vein -- falls under "or when pronounced as 'a', as in neighbor or weigh." So it's 'ei' and part of the rule.

If there are any exceptions to these easy exceptions, please post.

BTW, I prefer

'I' before 'e', except when it's 'e' before 'i'.

--betaneptune 2010-02-26 5:00 UTC —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.105.186.199 (talk)


 * The mnemonic as stated above has very few exceptions in standard English.
 * "I before e except after c to make the sound ee."


 * But you have to read what it says and not make up pseudo-rules. If the sound is not 'ee' or if the letter pair is preceded by 'c' then the rule doesn't apply. If the rule does not apply then it says nothing about the order of i and e. It certainly doesn't mean that you have to use 'ei'. That would be another rule - and one that has more exceptions. If you ignore foreign imports, proper nouns and chemical names then I can only think of 3 exceptions, Seize, Forfeit and Weird. 'Weird' does not have pure 'ee' sound but it's close enough. Chemical names are essentially derived from German and so are, at least second hand, foreign imports. That accounts for words such as Caffeine and Codeine.


 * This article is a mess. Most of it is trying to defend an obviously wrong statement (i before e except after c without any qualification) and most of the rest is making up rules about what happens when ie does follow c. I'm not sure that the article is viable in its current form. OrewaTel (talk) 02:18, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Swingeing
This exclusively British word does not seem significant enough to be listed as an example. I feel it should be included in "etc." along with other obscure words rarely used. If it were in a list of examples, it would be fine, but in its current situation, I feel it is unnecessary. Clearly someone feels otherwise, as they reverted my change, and I would like him to explain himself. Alexandre-Jérôme 05:36, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

List
I wish this page had a full list of the exceptions. Chubbles 21:31, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * That's not practicable. A really complete list would run to tens of thousands of words.  (The "rule" is of highly dubious merit; there are almost as many words that don't follow it as there are words that do.)  Listing the major categories of exceptions will have to be good enough. --Jonadab, 2007 Nov 12.

Family Guy
Doesn't Peter Griffin mention this rule in some episode of Family Guy or am I mistaken? --Stefán Örvarr Sigmundsson 22:43, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

The limited vocabulary of a child?
I've expunged this:
 * It should be noted, however, that the rhyme is principally intended to help children learn to spell. Given the limited vocabulary of a child, the number of exceptions is much smaller than might be noted by a literate adult.

"It should be noted" is among phrases to avoid; in any case it is noted by the word "students" in the first sentence. As to whether the exceptions are few or many, that seems to be WP:OR and possibly WP:POV. jnestorius(talk) 23:25, 9 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I realise this was some time ago, but still I thought I should give my input. I don't know where you're from, but to me and I think most Brits, "children" and "students" imply quite different age groups.  While a "student" may be a child at school, more commonly it's somebody at college or university, so typically mid-late teens or early-mid 20s (though since it's a status rather than an age group, someone in his/her 40s or even 90s could be a student).


 * Now the article doesn't seem to claim the 'rule' is targeted at any particular demographic. I'm not sure if this is better or worse.  What do people think? — Smjg (talk) 15:05, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Foreign words
I think it is a mistake to list all English words that represent nothing more than direct adoption from a non-English language. Or I think it should be pointed out that these are not English exceptions, but rather direct adoptions from the original French (e.g. peignoir, reveille), or German (e.g. Einstein, einsteinium, Frankenstein, Rotweiller, stein, zeitgeist, leitmotiv). -Thibbs (talk) 19:05, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
 * English is a very compositted language so of course exceptions will come from other languages but so will rule followers --71.131.27.5 (talk) 03:42, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I believe that "ceilidh" would count among these cases too, unless it's a mis-spelling in the first paragraph. If it really is "ceilidh", this word wouldn't be considered english strictly speaking, but rather celtic / gaelic. Doing some googling I came to find out that it's an irish dance. --Lwangaman (talk) 14:26, 17 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Especially since this is apparently an Irish term, and Irish spelling compared to English is horribly counterintuitive. Having never heard of this before, I'm wondering whether there's a specific reason it's included in the list. Is this allegedly in the non-Gaelic vernacular? 205.175.240.244 (talk) 15:25, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Ceilidh is in lots of English dictionaries. It is in the list since there are very few words with -cei- and the others listed have a different vowel.  As the article says, " Few common words have the cei spelling handled by the rule".  Of course one could (re-)interpret the basic rule to exclude loanwords; there are cited sources which exclude Scots words, but others which implicitly include at least some loanwords. jnestorius(talk) 13:04, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Who's in Charge?
Who sets these rules? I noticed the British Government absolved the rules in 2009, so is it them? Who comes up with new rules? When new rules or modifications are proposed, who are they proposed to? Who is the authority? If the english language should evolve, who approves the evolution? My apologies in advance if there's an obvious answer in front of my face I've never realized. Hanz ofbyotch (talk) 17:10, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * There is no authority. The English language evolves on its own as it always has done.  "I before E except after C" isn't a rule in the sense of a law laid down by an authority:  it's simply a memory aid to help people remember a few spellings. Grover cleveland (talk) 04:40, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * ]evolves on its own
 * Or rather, it doesn't and that's the main reason English spelling is such a mess. A lot of changes really need to be made but the first people to actually implement it are at a disadvantage because of network effects. To implement the changes effectively a central coordinator is necessary to help everyone switch over in lockstep. The only body which could practically make it happen is the government, and it doesn't do its job and hence we're still trying to spell as if the last few hundred years didn't happen. Even though nobody wants to.
 * As for the actual rule, it isn't taught in English schools any more, because experience showed that people are more likely to mess up because of the rule than they are to get it right. It is counter-productive and best relegated to the history books. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.90.173 (talk) 04:31, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

in pop culture
http://jwbookarchive.posterous.com/i-before-e-accept-after-c-with-a-few-exceptio —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.194.190.179 (talk) 21:01, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

my favorite movie is Weird Science. It don't follow no stinkin' rules! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.230.41.43 (talk) 16:21, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Reinsure
The word "reinsure" should not be considered as an example in the case of this rule, as it is made up of the word "insure" with the prefix "re-", and the i and e are broken up into two syllables. Will (talk) 09:15, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Even better rule
"I before E except after C, or when it does not sound like EE"

Like in "their", "feisty", "height", "Einstein", or "neighbor" and "weigh". It is not just A that is an exception. "Science" and "Deity" have "ie" producing two distinct syllables rather than "ee", and "either" is actually supposed to be pronounced with a long I. Ticklewickleukulele (talk) 19:08, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Here's the actual "even better rule": http://www.steve.wagar.com/ibeforee.htm Cbsteffen (talk) 00:17, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Misquote. Last bit is "when the sound is EE"

Now it makes sense. You're welcome x Weeabi (talk) 13:29, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

"Long" vowels
This edit is wrongheaded and seems to be written from the POV of a General American accent. Calling the sounds in question 'the "a" sound' is worse than calling them "long a" (similarly for e). If you mean "the vowel of the name of the letter a", then you are only talking about the FACE lexical set, in which case SQUARE words like their are not covered. Describing it as a diphthong is valid only for some phonemes in some accents; still more so giving a particular IPA representation. If you mean to include SQUARE as well, then "a" sound is too vague; obviously you don't mean the TRAP or PALM vowels, which are also spelled with a. The name "long a" is indeed discredited and inaccurate; hence the scare-quotes. It is, however, still well known and used in the context of the rule, which is also discredited and inaccurate. If you can find a more up-to-date cover-term than "long a", great, as long as it's accurate. Maybe something involving underlying representation. With sources. jnestorius(talk) 13:48, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, there are a few things going on in this dispute.
 * 1. Yes, you're right, I was unfairly pushing a General American POV, however, per Help:IPA_for_English, /eɪ/ is the correct representation of this phoneme, as it "accommodates standard General American, Received Pronunciation, Canadian English, South African English, Australian English, and New Zealand English pronunciations."
 * 2. I was also pushing for a POV that is fair to speakers of English as a second or foreign language. The terms "long" and "short" are needlessly confusing to these speakers, as prosodic features of words will cause certain vowels in English to become long or short. Thus, using the terms "long" and "short" is actually harmful to describing these sounds to people who are not familiar with the terms, especially if they come from a language that has contrastive vowel length. The best shorthand that I could come up with off the top of my head was to call it "the 'a' sound", which is also confusing.
 * 3. You are correct that phrasing it "the vowel of the name of the letter a" is better, but still not the best.
 * 4. The restriction to the FACE lexical set is actually necessary, because SQUARE has a different, albeit similar, phoneme (/ɛər/). Thus, a separate division for SQUARE should be included.
 * 5. You need to actually read the article on underlying representations, because it has absolutely no bearing here; URs are theoretical concepts to account for phonological rules that produce surface realization of phonemes. They have nothing to do with diaphonemes.


 * tl;dr Per WP:PRON, "broad transcriptions of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) should be used". Thus, "a more up-to-date cover-term" is already present and accepted on WP, and I used it. I am going to change the transcriptions to reflect an international audience and the WP:MOS. 69.91.221.75 (talk) 20:55, 10 March 2014 (UTC)


 * There are some people who think "when sounded like A" part of the rule applies only to the FACE vowel; however, there are others who believe it also applies to the SQUARE vowel. The latter people do not have a rule "when sounded like A or AIR". They have a single mental conception of the "like A" sound in question, although it maps to multiple phonemes. It is that single mental conception that I have labelled "long A". Whether the mental conception is an underlying representation or not I don't know. If you can find a better label for it, great. If someone does not understand "long a", there is a gloss in parentheses right after it:
 * "long a" (the lexical sets of FACE and perhaps SQUARE).
 * I concede that adding IPA for each set would be helpful:
 * "long a" (the lexical sets of FACE and perhaps SQUARE ).
 * I find it hard to parse your reformulation:
 * the sound of the name of the letter "a", which has the lexical set of FACE (or and the lexical set of SQUARE, when followed by an "r").
 * Are your parentheses correct? The name of the letter a does not have lexical set SQUARE when followed by an "r". A-Rod does not sound like Air-Rod (or Air-Odd). BTW, I'm not sure how far down you've read, but the rest of the article has lots of IPA, and further use of the terms "long a" and "long e". jnestorius(talk) 12:29, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Proununciation part of the base rule, or an additional restriction that's sometimes considered?
''The proportion of exceptions can be reduced by restricting application of the rule based on the sound represented by the spelling. Two common restrictions are:''
 * [...]
 * including only cases where the spelling represents the "long e" sound (the lexical sets of FLEECE and perhaps NEAR  and happY ).

I was always taught that this condition is part of the basic rule, such that words like 'vein' and 'leisure' are not exceptions at all. Once upon a time, Test the Nation: Know Your English Test had a question "Which of these words breaks a rule?", to which "height" was the expected answer. Naturally I argued that this was wrong because the word has no 'ee' sound and so is outside the scope of the rule.

This statement implies the opposite - that the basic rule has no regard for the sound the 'ei' or 'ie' makes, and the versions where it does matter are variations.

My guess is that:
 * "I before E except after C, when the sound is 'ee'" is the essence of the original rule.
 * People came to call it simply "I before E except after C", either as an oversight or because they are unaware of the restriction.
 * Consequently, some people have come to try to apply it to cases where the word doesn't have an 'ee' sound.

But it seems we can't be sure either way. The cited Manual of English Spelling shows no regard for pronunciation, but if you look then you'll see that the majority of words listed as following the rule have the 'ie' or 'ei' making an 'ee' sound, and most if not all of the words listed as exceptions have a different sound. This suggests to me that the rule is older, and includes the "when the sound is 'ee'" condition in its original form (explicitly stated or not), but the author overlooked it. If on the other hand Laurie understood pronunciation to be irrelevant, I think he would have aimed for a good balance of words in each group in which the 'ei' or 'ie' has different pronunciations, so as not to leave people shouting at the page, "of course those don't follow the rule, they don't have an 'ee' sound!"

Of course, the ideal is if we can find an even older source that has the rule in its original form. But it may be the case that the rule was originally spread by word of mouth, and so the origin can't be traced....

Anyway, what are people's thoughts on this? — Smjg (talk) 13:47, 17 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Careful! Asking "what are people's thoughts" may breach Not a forum. I think it is reading too much into the text to infer "the basic rule has no regard for the sound". (However, perhaps the text could usefully be rephrased to reduce the danger of drawing such an unintended and unwarranted inference.) The short wording does not explicitly regard the sound; it may be interpreted as implicitly having such a restriction, or a longer wording may be used to make this explicit. One might ask which wording or inference comes first historically, or is most prevalent, or can be considered most "basic" in some sense; but these are questions not really answered by the article (or by any of the sources I have read). jnestorius(talk) 15:14, 20 March 2015 (UTC)


 * It seems my comment didn't save for some reason. To explain my edit earlier:
 * It had examples of ei not preceded by c that aren't pronounced with a "long e" sound, but no such examples for ie after c.
 * As written, it seemed to be saying the examples of exceptions are examples of exceptions regardless of which version of the rule is being used, which isn't the case.
 * It had two examples that aren't exceptions at all by any version of the rule: science and atheist. These don't contain the ei or ie digraph at all - they contain the two letters pronounced separately.
 * — Smjg (talk) 12:55, 12 May 2020 (UTC)


 * I realise now I'm having trouble finding examples of cie in which the ie is a digraph pronounced other than a "long e" sound. There are many words containing the sequence of letters (science, efficient, conscience, etc.), but the i and e seem to be pronounced separately in all of them.   (In the latter two cases, the i is part of a digraph or a trigraph involving the c, but that's an aside).  So maybe there aren't any good examples of this.  I'm not sure how we can address this in the article, unless we can find either a few suitable examples or a reliable source confirming that no examples exist. — Smjg (talk) 11:02, 13 May 2020 (UTC)


 * I was taught the following rule, "To make the sound 'ee' then 'i' before 'e' except after 'c'. And I was taught the only three exceptions among standard base English words namely 'seize', 'weird' and 'forfeit'. Words such as 'caffeine' are foreign imports whereas 'Keith' and 'Feilding' are proper nouns. The rule specifically excludes cases where the digraph is preceded by 'c' so we can forget about 'species' and similar. All other so-called exceptions are excluded because they are not pronounced 'ee' in standard English pronunciation. I am aware that in some parts of USA 'leisure' is pronounced 'leeshure' but that is not standard English pronunciation.
 * We could make this article a lot shorter by deleting all the stuff about exceptions to other rules that do not work. OrewaTel (talk) 08:36, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Another ditty
The version I learned as a child (circa 1960) was:

I before E, except after C, and other weird cases.

Brevity has value, sometimes.

83.104.133.97 (talk) 13:55, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Historical explanation?
I was hoping in the History section to find an explanation for why this pattern exists (to the extent that it does), maybe in terms of phonemes that were originally different converging, or the relative frequencies of diphthongs in words with Latin versus other roots, but didn't find anything like that. I don't suppose anyone is in a position to take a stab at it? Willhsmit (talk) 01:14, 23 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I've added a bit, which only related to the -ee- sound. jnestorius(talk) 14:48, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

found an image of sign placed near a road
it reads in its headline: "INDIAN HILLS COMMUNITY CENTER" and in its body: "I BEFORE E EXCEPT AFTER C DISPROVED BY SCIENCE" this probably contributes the word "science" as an exception to the rule. image reference to the quote, general reference and backgrounder --Alexander.stohr (talk) 16:29, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Obviously that sign is a joke. The word "science" doesn't contain the digraph "ie" or "ei" at all – it contains the separately pronounced letters "i" and "e". — Smjg (talk) 07:13, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

The double breakers are mostly plurals of words ending in cy.
Just looked at it. Alfa-ketosav (talk) 03:16, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
 * What is a "double breaker?" — Smjg (talk) 07:13, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
 * 'Words that break both the "I before E" part and the "except after C" part' jnestorius(talk) 00:33, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The simplest form of the saying is "I before E except after C." Read that carefully. What it actually says is that if there is no 'C' then you place 'I' before 'E'. But if there is a 'C' then the rule does not apply. Nowhere does it say that if there is a preceding 'C' then the double vowel should be 'EI'. That is just sloppy illogical thinking. Consequently the double breakers actually conform to the rule. OrewaTel (talk) 06:27, 7 October 2021 (UTC)