I'm sure we've all heard that when spelling a word, that has ie/ei in it, we must use 'i' before 'e', except after 'c'. example...receive/relieve.

Why do 'e' comes before 'i', in the word THEIR, because there is no 'c'?

The rest goes something like: "...except when it sounds like A as in neighbor and weigh."

But it's weird that "weird" breaks both rules.

Curt, that 'is' weird. Now that I'm on the subject, I'm more determined now than ever, to find an answer. There's probably hundreds of words that break both rules, so now, how can I feed my curiosity? 'Their' breaks both rules, also.

On my side of the Pond children of my vintage were taught

"I before E, except after C
When the diphthong rhymes with KEY."

That allows ei in all your example words - neighbour, weigh, weird and their. I'm sure someone will produce a word that doesn't fit even that rule though!

The way I learned it was "I before E except after C, or when sounded like A as in neighbor or weigh," and then some sentence that I have forgotten, but was at least similar to this one:

"The weird foreigner neither seizes leisure nor forfeits height."

That sentence supposedly contains all the exceptions, or words closely related to them (neither and either, foreigner and foreign, etc.). Depending on your pronounciation, some of those words break Ewood's rule.

Additional exceptions would be those formed by adding a prefix or suffix such as de- or -ist (e.g. atheist). The problem is that it is not always so obvious that a suffix is the cause (e.g. caffeine).

There are probably exceptions beyond those (the most obvious being people's names, such as Einstein).



So much for simple rules.

[This message was edited by methos5000 on 05-26-03 at 08:51 AM.]

quote:

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Originally posted by honilov:
Curt, that 'is' weird. Now that I'm on the subject, I'm more determined now than ever, to find an answer. There's probably hundreds of words that break both rules, so now, how can I feed my curiosity? 'Their' breaks both rules, also.

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Well, hon. I did a *ei* and and *ie* search on my electornic Webster's and came up with about 6,000 words with ei and about 25,000 with ie. As to determining which of those rules break the "i before e" rule, you're on your own!

Thanks Curt : So the rule is as before plus "and then guess 'i.e''", because it's some four to one that that's right

You're welcome, Fred. I'm glad you understood the note.

Thanks everyone for your reply. I've been faced with words like this so many times, and sometimes I 'actually' have to concentrate to figure what comes first. If you ever see that I've written 'thier', then you'll know that I didn't concentrate.

I assume that "their" is spelled that way because it stems from "they."
Now - as to why it is "their" and not something like "theys" - I do not know.
Just another quirk of English I guess...

According to M-W:
"Their: Etymology: Middle English, from their, pronoun, from Old Norse theirra, genitive plural demonstrative & personal pronoun; akin to Old English thæt that
Date: 13th century"