--- Howard Brazee <howard at brazee.net> wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: David Silberstein [mailto:davids at kithrup.com] > Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2004 1:56 PM > To: Dragaera List > Subject: RE: Robert Jordan (was: Seen the other night....) > > On Sat, 21 Feb 2004, Mark A Mandel wrote: > > >On Fri, 20 Feb 2004, David Silberstein wrote: > > > >#On Fri, 20 Feb 2004, Mark A Mandel wrote: > ># > >#>"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. > ># > > > > Their. > > Heir. > > A weird foreign sheik bought a heifer right after reveille. I can't remember the sentence I once came up with, but it was about Marcie Eisenstein's oneiric seizures and prescient fancies. The British has far fewer exceptions than the American one: When the sound is "ee", It's "I" before "E" Except after "C". (from the AUE FAQ at <http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usage/english/original/> This rule simply gives up on cases where the vowel sound is that of "they", "their", "heifer", "conscience", "science", "deity", etc. The main exceptions are from Scots (weird, Keith, etc.) or from Greek, especially scientific Greek (protein, caffeine, etc.) Words such as "fancied" and "mercies" didn't use to be exceptions in English "Received Pronunciation", since the last vowel in them was the "short i" of "Sid", but now a great many educated English people pronounce them with "ee". No matter what rule you use, there are lots of words you have to learn. Jerry Friedman, in keeping with the rule. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want. http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools