Rant of the Day: I Before E Except After C

I sometimes teach English for money (note - I am not an English Teacher), so occasionally I come to lament my pathetic spelling. I am incapable of spelling any word which is not phonetic or has a collection of similar sounding vowels in sequence.

Especially, words like Wierd, Thier or Sceince.

Then I realized something, I spell these words wrong because of being made to recite "I before E except after C", like a sacred mantra at school. With these words I follow the rule and get it wrong.

Here is a list of words which don't follow the rule:

• absenteeism
• agreeing
• albeit
• atheist
• beige
• being
• caffeine
• canoeing
• codeine
• counterfeit
• deign
• deity
• edelweiss
• eiderdown
• eight
• either
• fahrenheit
• feign
• feint
• feisty
• foreign
• forfeit
• freight
• gneiss
• heifer
• height
• heir
• herein
• leisure
• leitmotif
• madeira
• neigh
• neighbour
• neither
• oleic
• pein
• plebeian
• pleiades
• protein
• seize
• reign
• rein
• reinstate etc
• reveille
• seeing
• sheik
• skein
• sleigh
• sleight
• sovereign
• spontaneity
• surfeit
• surveillance
• their
• therein
• veil
• vein
• weigh
• weight
• weir
• weird
• wherein
• ancient
• co-efficient
• concierge
• conscience
• deficient
• efficient
• fancied
• financier
• glacier
• hacienda
• inscient
• omniscient
• policies
• prescient
• prima facie
• proficient
• science
• society
• species
• sufficient

In fact there are more words which break the rule than obey it. So, thank you for ruining my spelling "I before E except after C"!

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