...except after "c" or when sounding like "ay", as in neighbor or weigh

• Neighbor
• Eight
• Beige
• Sleigh
• Received
• Foreign
• Weightlifters

Follow the rule

How do you pronounce 'received'? (Or foreign, for that matter...)

... and you'll always be wrong no matter what you say!

Received is the except after C rule. Foreign uses the same ay sound as neighbor.

Keith is a better one, but it's a proper noun so a lot of rules for spelling are ignored.

or when sounding like "ay", as in neighbor or weigh

And on weekends and holidays and all throughout may. You'll always be wrong no matter what you say!

The phrase I learned was "except after 'c' but only if the sound is 'ee'". Mostly also works.

I’m sorry… foreign and neighbor do not use the same sound

Foreign does not use the same sound as neighbor.

nAYbor

forEN

It does when you pronounce it correctly.

It absolutely doesn't have a hard E vowel sound. Except when my deep south relatives say it.

It doesn't work all the time. English is full of nonsense like that. People always only remember half of this rule though.

How do you counterfeit a beige sleigh? Paint it tan instead?

I'm seizing this!

Feels like it was ripped from the AI in Dungeon Crawler Carl

I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but it's pronounced sayzing. It has to because of the rule.

"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."

Firstly, there is, effectively, no 'correct' way to pronounce any damn thing. Languages belong to those who use them. RP English is no more correct than Delhi English, or Alabama English for that matter.

Secondly, I have English speaking friends from just about every US state, and so many countries, and I have never once heard one pronounce foreign as "fore-ayn." I'd love to know what dialect you speak.

That’s not very scientific…

Edit: Downvote why? ‘Science’ clearly doesn’t follow the rule.

Four-Ay-Gun

Nope.

This is the type of mnemonic device I can get behind. Now if only it were subtly rooted in class consciousness...

i before e, except after c, and this only applies when it rhymes with "me"

re-saved clearly

Good point, need to add that it’s also only for diphthongs. Science doesn’t apply because the i and e are in different syllables.

QI before E

Boxen!

"Just sound it out" is the best I got, wish mnemonic devices worked for me but they always get reversed or worse

The big yellow one is the sun

"It's a cup of dirt! ...I took a cup... and I put some dirt in it."

As a scientist, I'm getting a seizure from people in society pretending like this is a useful rule.

The actual rule is "memorise every word individually over a lifetime because there are no rules"

You must pronounce Foreign in a strange way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_before_E_except_after_C

It does sound like forayn to me.

"Received" would be the "except after C" part, not the "sounding like ay" part.

Not sure about "foreign", or "leisure" for that matter. Maybe foreign used to be pronounced with the "ay" sound. I'm guessing something similar with leisure.

Because it's not a "hard" E.... it's a mid-central vowel in "foreign" (schwa): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid_central_vowel (like when going "uh")

Proof in an American dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/foreign

While "ei" in "Neighbor" is NOT a schwa, it's an "ay": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/neighbor

No...

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/neighbor

nā-bər

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/foreign

fȯr-ən

You're probably speaking some fringe accent.

They do but not where its_kim thinks:

fȯr-ən

nā-bər

The "ei" in "foreign" is a schwa ( /ə/ ) and so is the "o" in neighbor.

Sources (American English): https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/foreign, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/neighbor

The most common pronounciations are "for-in" and "for-un".

Source: English linguistics student who can read phonetic notation

The rule that I was taught as a kid was “I before E except after C only if the sound is ee”

It catches all of the examples on the mug except “weird” which gets a pass in my book because it’s weird (Keith’s excluded because proper nouns don’t follow rules). It doesn’t catch “caffeine” but the “ei” in “caffeinated” isn’t pronounced ee where I come from.

I’ve never heard the “ay” rule but it doesn’t seem to catch as many words as the “not ee” rule.

Honestly I wish we would just stop teaching stupid ‘rules’ like this. English is easier to just remember than to try to suss out some sort of rule set by which you can magically spell a word you just heard or magically pronounce a word you have only read. I hated being told to sound shit out when I was a kid.

It’s like “‘c’s make a ‘k’ or ‘s’ noise, sound it out”:
Pacific Ocean

Fucking really?

Do you have tube of cannonball wound ointment?

Yes, you are correct that it does not have a hard E sound

i.e. English is weird

Yeah the whole rule (and really the whole confusion) is about "ee". Other pronunciations are always spelt "ei" anyway.

It still has exceptions but it catches a lot. And i wish people followed it because I die inside every time someone spells "Wiener" as "Weiner". The city is called Wien ffs.

Just memorize the exceptions. It's better to memorize rules than words.

Not if the rules don't fucking work lol.