Grammar

I have an admitted aversion to rules of spelling. They make sense in some languages, but not necessarily in English. Part of the problem is the veritable hodge podge of sources from which English is derrived; especially French, but also German, Latin, Greek, and smatterings of Arabic, Spanish and even Turkish. (but I mostly blame the French). As a result, rules spelling are a bit nonsensical.

I very clearly remember being in Mrs. Hippe's first grade class in Morningside School, when she taught us the "i before e except after c" nonsense. I said, "What about the word "weird"? "That's an exception," she patiently explained. "What about "neighbor"? "Yes, as I said "except in words like 'neighbor' and 'weigh.'" Yikes. More exceptions! I couldn't take it!

I looked into it over the years (yes, I was that nerdy as a child), and found a litany of words that were apparently, 'exceptions' to the rule, including some that even had i before e BEFORE the c):

Caffeine

Beige

Ceiling

Conceit

Leisure

Seize

Weird

Deficiency

Eight

Either

Freight

Heist

Neigh

Conscience

Feign

Height

Kaleidoscope

Ancient

Efficient

Field

There are more, but you get the idea. At any rate, at that young age, I didn't yet know the full implications of my discovery, but I knew I was on to something, and vowed then and there to eschew the memorization of rules to spelling, and instead just work on learning how to spell the words themselves. (Now even that seems rather obsolete, but if you can at least distinguish between there, they're and their, you'd have something over A.I. software).