I before E except after C, except …

English has what linguists call deep orthography: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Orthographic_depth" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Orthographic_depth</a>. It has to do with the conservative nature of English spelling. English would rather maintain the same spelling for a word than have it accurately reflect the pronunciation. This makes English much harder to learn than languages with shallow orthography.<p>This is another reason why Esperanto remains a better international language than English. In Esperanto, each letter has exactly one sound, and there are no exceptions.

I remember from a junior high textbook (probably eighth grade) the expanded version<p><pre><code> I before E except after C And when sounded as A, as in &quot;neighbor&quot; and &quot;weigh&quot; </code></pre> That leave some weird exceptions...

That rule cost me the 5th grade spelling bee. I lost on “forfeit”, appropriately.

I learned it with the additional phrase that was something like “and in words that sound like ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh’.

English is fun like that. Rules everywhere invented for the fun of being broken.

Nice to see a project using Mithril!

&quot;I before E except for ~3000 words, many of which are common&quot;

I dislike that people interpret this adage being violated as an example of English&#x27;s inconsistency. The clearer conclusion is that it just isn&#x27;t true.<p>I could say &quot;every word in English starts with ß&quot; and then point out that <i>every single word</i> violates this rule. What a crazy language!<p>But that would be silly. Not because English is crazy, but because that obviously isn&#x27;t true.