On Fri, 20 Feb 2004, David Silberstein wrote:
#On Fri, 20 Feb 2004, Mark A Mandel wrote:
#
#>On Fri, 20 Feb 2004, Casey Rousseau wrote:
#>
#>#Peirs Anthony
#> Piers
#>
#>#Tolkein
#> Tolkien
#>
#>"I before E except after C,
#> Or when pronounced 'ay', as in 'neighbor' and 'weigh'."
#
#Heinlein. Peirce. Sleight. Seize. Deice. Weir. Deil.
#Deity. Deis. Their. Heir.
#
#OK, "deice" is MONDO cheating, but nevertheless.
#Not that you're wrong about Tolkien, but that rule is not sufficiently
#absolute to be useful, especially when spelling people's names.
#[ now, watch Mario^H^H^H^H^H Dr. Whom cut me down to size. ]
Not really... <eg>. You've got good points here. (But never invite Mario
to match points with you!)
Rules of thumb can't incorporate all the caveats that may be necessary.
English has so bloody many lexical exceptions (where you have to know
the word) that it can't be all done by rule.
Nothing in English spelling is absolute. I just thought I had to say
something for those two in one post; and the misspelling of "Tolkien"*
is too common to be left alone, at least for a language fiend ("ie") who
got hooked on LotR about 1963.
* And the (I suspect) associated mispronunciation. The name rhymes with
"seen", not "sign".
Let's see...
Peirce.
A name, and Scottish. Names are bl@@dy unpredictable. If John Mxyzptlk
says he pronounces his last name "Smith", you have to go along with it.
Heinlein.
A name, and from German.
Their.
Heir.
Pronounced "ay", with the difference you'd expect before "r", and so
obeying the rule. (Note that "they" would be spelled "thei" if we didn't
have a strong prejudice against writing final "i" that has led us to
write it "y" for centuries.)
Sleight.
Before "gh" it's always "ei", never "ie", as far as I can remember.
Usually these fall into the "pronounced ay" rule, but "sleight" and
"height" don't.
Deice.
Deity.
Two syllables, a rare situation. If you can pronounce these you
should know how to spell them. "Deity", though, is one of those
"seen-but-not-heard" words, which probably accounts for the common "ie"
mistake.
Seize.
Weir.
Lexical exceptions that I can't fit into any pattern.
Deil.
Scottish (from "devil").
Deis.
Where'd you get this one? The OED has it only as a spelling of "dais"
used in the 13th to 16th centuries.
-- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and
Philological Busybody
a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel