British government spells end of 'i before e' rule - Yahoo! News

British government spells end of "i before e" rule

"It's a spelling mantra that generations of schoolchildren have learned — 'i before e, except after c.' But new British government guidance tells teachers not to pass on the rule to students, because there are too many exceptions. The "Support For Spelling" document, which is being sent to thousands of primary schools, says the rule "is not worth teaching" because it doesn't account for words like 'sufficient,' 'veil' and 'their.'"

Wrong. I wouldn't nitpick this point if some ordinary person had made the error, but you would expect the official British royal and ancient high grammar muck-a-mucks to know that "veil" is not an exception to the rule. The complete ditty is "i before e except after c, or when sounded like a as in neighbor or weigh." (That rule could also be extended to include "their," since the long "a" before "r" is pronounced that way. Compare "care" to "their." When English wants to create a true long "a" before an "r," it adds a "ye" and forces the sound into two syllables (more like 1.5 syllables): "Bayer" ... "payer" ... "soothsayer." The true "long a" before "r" is often confused with the abridged version. Some native speakers pronounce "they're" to rhyme with "payer," rather than as a homophone of "their," as typically prescribed.

If I were a Grammar God, I'd be trying to fix English spelling rather than trying to fix the silly mnemonics we use as crutches when we walk through our eccentric orthography. It would be nice if we had a language in which we could determine the sounds from the letters, like most sensible languages, instead of having to memorize the pronunciation of so many words and often being lost when we encounter an unfamiliar word. I say "eenuf!"