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Worst rule ever (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago by zedgeist@lemmy.world to c/linguistics_humor@sh.itjust.works

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[–] muhyb@programming.dev 0 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Can anyone explain what's "i before e"?

[–] Ryanmiller70@lemmy.zip 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I before E except after C

And when sounding like A as in neighbor and weigh

And on weekends and holidays and all throughout May

And you'll always be wrong no matter WHAT YOU SAY

[–] a_pithy_name@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago

It isn't often I see Brian Regan bits in the wild. The same thing came to mind.

[–] muhyb@programming.dev 0 points 7 months ago

Heh, onlu rule in English: Memorize them all!

[–] Madison420@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Rules for English that aren't absolute.

I before e except after c. Which obviously is not totally accurate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_before_E_except_after_C

[–] muhyb@programming.dev 0 points 7 months ago

Thanks for the link. Explains why I never heard of it, it's more or less useless. Though English spelling has many problems, not just this.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It's a general pattern someone noticed and then rhymed: ⟨ie⟩ is more likely to appear than ⟨ei⟩ in English, except after ⟨c⟩. However it is not a rule; there's no orthographic principle behind that pattern, not even an underlying phonemic reason, so you're bound to see exceptions everywhere, to the point it's useless.

[–] LwL@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I thought it was specifically about words with long e sounds? So "Keith" would be an exception (but it's a name and those are always weird - though "weird" itself is a better example), but most of the stuff on the mug it never meant to apply to. And overall for long e sounds it applies far more often than not. Ultimately english spelling will always be a clusterfuck though.

And I sure wish people would stop spelling wiener as weiner. The city is called Wien ffs.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I wouldn't go that far. Sometimes I'm not sure which way around they go, and that will usually lead you the right way.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You got me curious, so I checked it.

I downloaded this wordlist with 479k words, and used find+replace to count four strings: cie, cei, ie, ei. Here's the result:

16566 (75%) ie vs. 5649 (25%) ei
875 cie (74%) vs. 302 cei (26%)

So the basic rule (i before e) holds some merit, but the "except after c" part is bullshit - it's practically the same distribution.

Of course, this takes all words as equiprobable; results would be different if including the odds of a word appearing in the text into the maths.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 7 months ago

Of course, this takes all words as equiprobable; results would be different if including the odds of a word appearing in the text into the maths.

I feel like it works more like 90% of the time when it comes up, so maybe this. And could it be that the words where "ie" appears are more ambiguous somehow, like don't fit neatly into some existing pattern?

I don't remember the "after c" bit ever coming up, on the other hand, so that makes sense.