Britain is tossing the “i before e, except after c” rule

The reason: there are too many exceptions like veil and vein. However, the Brits seem to have lopped off the second half of the rule: “i before e except after c, unless the sound is an ‘a’ as in neighbor or weigh.”   This is a partial list of words where ei has an “a” sound:

• beige
• foreign
• reign
• rein
• their
• vein
• height
• veil

Yes, there are a few ei words that have a long e sound:

• either
• weird
• codeine
• leisure (unless you’re Thurston Howell, III and pronounce it with a short e sound like “lezhure”)

Should the rule be thrown out? Probably not. It’s worked very well for a long time without any serious problems. Dropping the rule, however, will probably cause more confusion, in my opinion.