I'm sure you learned it in school. "I before E, except after C!" chirped your perky third-grade spelling teacher.
Even back then (granted, I was a smart-ass kid), I was pointing out how dumb this rule seemed to be. I mean, it practically has more exceptions than not. Naturally, my teachers wished I would just shut up.
But seriously. Here is just a partial listing of words that don't follow the rule: weird, veil, beige, heist, science, deity, weight, height, eight, rein, either, neither, society, feisty, heinous, caffeine, leisure, heir, seize....
I could go on.
Some people would say that you shouldn't count words that have foreign origins. But guess what folks... it's English. If you go back far enough, ALL OF THE WORDS have foreign origins!
So anyway. I just wish they would stop teaching this rule and teach more reliable rules instead. Like... OK, I can't think of any. Let's all just speak Spanish instead. It's such a nice, simple, lovely, orderly language. ¿No?
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