Do we need “i” before “e”?
The spelling mantra that generations of schoolchildren have learned — “i before e, except after c”, is being abandoned in the UK. New British government guidance tells teachers not to pass on the rule to students, because there are too many exceptions.
The “Support For Spelling” document, which is being sent to thousands of primary schools, says the rule “is not worth teaching” because it doesn’t account for words like ‘sufficient,’ ‘veil’ and ‘their.’
Jack Bovill of the Spelling Society, which advocates simplified spelling, said Saturday he agreed with the decision, but supporters say the ditty has value because it is one of the few language rules that most people remember.
The thing is: the full mnemonic is rarely taught and in fact the ditty is much longer: “I before E except after C or when sounded as A as in ‘neighbour’ and ‘weigh.’” This is a much more comprehensive rule and while there are still exceptions, they are usually grounded in good historical reasons like, of course, it still doesn’t cover “sufficient”. This is because it is technically different: using the original pronunciation, the i and e form separate syllables, and so are pronounced suffish-ee-ent.
The trouble with and glory of English is that it very difficult to codify. Creating spelling mnemonics is all well and good if you can remember them. I listened to a debate on the radio about this yesterday. They reminded me of how I learned to spell necessary with: “1 Collar but 2 Socks”, and diarrhoea: Dining In A Rough Restaurant: Hurry, Otherwise Expect Accidents. However the latter is completely different to the way Americans spell “diarrhea”, and more of them speak English, than errmmmm…. English people.
This move is an acceptance that English is evolving rapidly – I receive many emails with yr=your, or y’r = you’re – and English, more than any other language is dynamically affected by common usage – or so my son’s friends would have me bleeve.
Now you can either take a stance and set the language in stone, eradicating all the misspellings for which our colonial cousins are responsible, or you can move with the reality of the situation and accept that old rules and old spellings may no longer apply and railing agin them is just shewing your age.
Added to the mess which this wonderful language gives us are the diverse spellings used wherever English is the written language. My favourite is encyclopædia – which absolutely no-one in Britain uses, but it IS the official spelling of the word. Instead we use encyclopedia, which is also used by Canadians and Americans. Similarly pædiatrics is never employed, except in the most academic of circles. Instead, the preferred paediatrics, or Americanised pediatrics, seems to be common currency, even amongst the practitioners of the science.
It seems æ is being reduced to a footnote in lexicographical history, which is a shame, because it does have its place. However, it does lead us to a reasonable point: if it acceptable for intelligent, reasonable, articulate and educated individuals to drop æ, then why is it NOT acceptable for my son’s chav friends to drop the o, u and e from you’re to come up with y’r?
Moreover, now the split infinitive is used with casual abandon on the BBC: you can hear it in sports reports on the hour every hour, and prepositions litter the end of sentences throughout the pages of the Times under the spurious guise of them being adverbial particles: isn’t it time we stopped being so anal about grammar? Or shall we draw a line in the sand, glare back at the leaden eyed morons and say: “No more, it stops here. This beautiful language will suffer no further corruption from the likes of you”?
