19

Arr I before E

There are 923 words that break the "i before e" rule. Only 44 words actually follow that rule.

This is a picture circulating right now, claiming that a huge majority of the words break the "i before e" rule, and that only a few actually follow it.

Is the rule as often incorrect as the picture claims?

"I before E, except after C" is a mnemonic rule of thumb for English spelling. If one is unsure whether a word is spelled with the sequence ei or ie, the rhyme suggests that the correct order is ie unless the preceding letter is c, in which case it is ei.

Wikipedia link that explains the rule

Brythan
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Wertilq
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  • Even a rule of thumb should have more use than not. If the rule is false 95% of the time, I wouldn't even call it a rule of thumb. – Wertilq Apr 22 '13 at 06:35
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    That is very specific, and I am pretty sure that is wrong. I'd rather see the spirit of the claim questioned than detailed data. – Wertilq Apr 22 '13 at 06:37
  • @Sancho Oxford's dictionary should be fine. Question is which branch of English it is. I'd be fine no matter if it is British or American English. – Wertilq Apr 22 '13 at 06:41
  • 923 words breaking it, and 44 obeying it, would suggest that remembering how to do spelling is easy - just do the opposite of the rule! – Andrew Grimm Apr 22 '13 at 11:18
  • According to one episode of [**Qi**](http://old.qi.com/tv/), The rule has been removed from the OED (?) for precisely the reason that it’s useless. – Konrad Rudolph Apr 22 '13 at 11:44
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    I saw a version of the I before E rule, that was a bit more complex, and probably a bit more correct. http://www.spelling.org/free/instructional/ie_rule.htm – Wertilq Apr 22 '13 at 15:15
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    The rule I learned was *"'i' before 'e' except after 'c' or when sounded as AY as in neighbor and weigh."* Still fails on some borrow words (especially from German) but works very well as far as I can tell. Not my lookout if you learned an incomplete version of the rule. I see that @Wertilq's version covers the German derived words and some of the even odder cases. – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Apr 22 '13 at 23:28
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    I believe this question is much harder to answer than simply examining a dictionary. You would also need to take into account word frequency. If there are thousands of "ei" words that you've never even heard of before that could obviously skew the results. – Octopain Apr 22 '13 at 22:48
  • I'm also curious what exactly the "skeptical" claim is here, but note that I don't think this "Rule" is actually taught anymore, as there are too many exceptions to reliably memorize. – KutuluMike Apr 26 '13 at 12:14
  • @Wertilq's link seems to have moved to http://www.avko.org/reference/ie_rule.htm – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Sep 21 '14 at 21:45
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    One needn't be omniscient to see that the rule is inefficient. Science is sufficient for proficient and conscientious fanciers to see that the rule is deficient in our society. – Larry OBrien Sep 23 '14 at 02:25
  • @dmckee There's more to the rule: *" ... and on holidays, in March, and April and May. And you're always wrong no matter what you say."* –  Aug 01 '17 at 04:53
  • another way to count it is by prevalence of the words in normal writing. Is the "rule" more often applicable to the words most people are likely to use or not? is likely to be far more interesting to your average person than whether some number derived from a dictionary count is higher or lower than some other number. – jwenting Aug 03 '17 at 13:37

1 Answers1

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It won't be possible to skeptically analyze whether or not the rule is useful. I will stick to analysis of the factual claim. I'm assuming that the "i before e" rule is exactly as you've quoted from the Wikipedia article.

The claim in the image is false.

In the Oxford English Dictionary, there are 8161 words that involve the letters i and e adjacent to each other.

To follow the rule, they would have to occur in the order "ie", unless they are preceded by the letter "c", in which case they must occur in the order "ei".

  • Words that have ie, not after c (ambience, achieved): 5232
  • Words that have cei (apperceive, ceiling): 182

To break the rule, they would have to occur in the order "ei" without being preceded by a "c" or appear in the order "ie" while being preceded by a "c".

  • Words that have ei, not after a c (abaeile, abeigh): 2423
  • Words that have cie (abortifacient, ancient): 384

So, among all ei or ie words in the Oxford English Dictionary, 5414 words follow the rule of thumb, and 2807 break the rule.

EDIT: The picture is similar when taking word frequency in to account. In a list of "the top 5,000 words in American English":

Those that follow the rule:

  • Words that have ie, not after c: 72
  • Words that have cei : 6

Those that break the rule

  • Words that have ei, not after a c: 19
  • Words that have cie: 10

So, among these most frequent words there are 78 supporting the rule, and 29 against.

jsh
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  • Sancho, where are these numbers from? – Oddthinking Apr 22 '13 at 07:13
  • From the Oxford English Dictionary. –  Apr 22 '13 at 07:14
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    Really, what page? :-) Where did you get these numbers... – Oddthinking Apr 22 '13 at 07:14
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    Whether this confirms or denies the claim depends on whether it is talking about the rule as a whole (5414 follow > 2807 break), or just the exception for "c" (182 follow < 384 break). – hammar Apr 22 '13 at 07:18
  • Might still be worth mentioning that according to your numbers, "I before E" without exceptions would be a better rule. – hammar Apr 22 '13 at 07:23
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    @Oddthinking, I used the online interface to the dictionary to search for the relevant letter combinations. I added links to the searches that I used. –  Apr 22 '13 at 07:31
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    @hammar, That may be true, but I'd rather stick to analyzing the claim, rather than suggesting improvements. –  Apr 22 '13 at 07:34
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    The rule is right more often than it is wrong, except for the c rule, but the picture didn't mention the c rule. Is there a big difference in american english, and british english? – Wertilq Apr 22 '13 at 07:47
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    @Wertilq The differences between American and British English spellings occasionally involve this rule (aging vs. ageing). So, American spellings (aging) may break the rule less often than British spellings (ageing). –  Apr 22 '13 at 08:05
  • @Wertilq Where it says "the i before e rule" it means the rule, "i before e except after c". I'm not sure exactly where it gets the numbers from but it seems that: (1) the "923 words that break" is referring to 'cie' words (384 according to OED); (2) the "44 words that follow" is referring to 'cei' words (182). – DisgruntledGoat Apr 22 '13 at 12:17
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    I will also add that if **one third of words break the rule**, while it technically works for more words than not, it's a pretty lousy and unreliable rule! – DisgruntledGoat Apr 22 '13 at 12:19
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    the only problem with this answer is words taken from foreign languages are included and they tend to follow the rules of their parent language. – Ryathal Apr 22 '13 at 12:30
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    All English words came from "foreign" languages. Brythonic, Saxon, Old Norse and others are all Greek to me. QED. – RedGrittyBrick Apr 22 '13 at 12:42
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    Implicit in that rule is that "ie" is used to make the long-e sound (-ee-). When I was taught the rule there was a second clause ... 'or as in "AY" as in "neighbour" or "weigh"'. With this clause the performance of the rule is much better. – Chris Cudmore Apr 22 '13 at 15:09
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    @DisgruntledGoat it would also depend on *which* words follow the rule - if the *ei* words are far less common in terms of actual usage than the *ie* words, then the rule would still be useful. – evilsoup Apr 22 '13 at 16:18
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    Just did a quick search of word frequency lists and it does appear like the "correctly following the rule" is far more prevalent than the opposition. – Jonathon Sep 21 '14 at 20:39
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    "And what about Or when sounding as 'ā' as in Neighbor and Weigh"? – Chad Sep 23 '14 at 13:53
  • @Chad, While I agree that it would be good to see those statistics, they'd be more difficult to analyze. Letter order can be checked with simple regular expressions, while vowel sounds are much more complicated. :) – Brian S Sep 23 '14 at 14:20
  • From what I've found, the image comes from... here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duqlZXiIZqA&app=desktop – Mooing Duck Oct 22 '15 at 14:54
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    Well, if you show us those 19 words (of the top 5,000) with *ei* not after *c* perhaps we can check their pronunciation. – GEdgar Aug 01 '17 at 00:40