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I before E, except in all these words

In English, the spelling patterns ei and ie can both represent an "ee" sound. So how do you know which one to use? For decades, English teachers have repeated the adage, ‘When the sound is "ee", it’s I before E, except after C.’

But oops, that’s not quite true. You also have to memorize the following list of exceptions:

  • being
  • caffeine
  • codeine
  • deity
  • either
  • Keith
  • leisure
  • Neil
  • neither
  • protein
  • seize
  • sheikh
  • Sheila
  • species
  • weird

Then add to the list hundreds of words ending in -cy that can change to -cies or -cied, such as currencies or fancied. A good example is oneiromancies, which breaks the rule twice! It means using dreams to predict the future.

The British government has just cought caught on to this confusion and is now asking teachers to stop using this rule.

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This entry was posted on June 20, 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “I before E, except in all these words”

  1. Being and deity are (in American English) usually pronounced bee-eng and dee-i-tee (with the i sounding like in “it”), so the i is pronounced in both cases. Also, “either” and “neither”, have an alternate pronunciation common among higher class people and people from the Northeast of being pronounced i-ther and ni-ther with the i sounding like sight. Leisure has an alternate, pretentious pronunciation of leszer instead of the more common leeszer.

  2. I always pronounce the “alternate, pretentious leszer” instead of the more common leeszer. I used to correct myself to the more common, but now that I’ve found Toby’s explanation I will keep my pretentious pronunciation.

  3. i think species doesn’t belong to that list

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