Worst rule ever

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 NEVER be right no matter WHAT you say!

CAT. K A T. I'm outta here.
(I know there's two Ts)
Oh... That's a hard rule

So like every other bloody rule I've ever learned in school

The "except after c" rule is for when the vowels make a long "e" sound.

Honestly, if you’ve got a sense for when it applies (of the words in the blurb, only Keith and counterfeit are actually exceptions), it can be pretty helpful. I learned this:
I before e except after c
Or when sounding like a as in neighbor and weigh
And weird’s weird!
And it applies only to words with an e sound that isn’t a diphthong, and not to words that are recent arrivals from other languages. If you’re using it to try to spell “hacienda,” it’s worthless. If you’re using it to figure out “conceited,” it’ll help.

Did you know if you only pay attention to half the rule the rule is useless?

Which part of the rule covers foreign or Keith? Counterfeit? Caffeinated? Feisty?

This just in: the English language has posted a response. 'We are a tough language. We freely admit this. However, we refuse to take any responsibility for Keith. His unusual... predilections are not related to us.'

I mean DARE was right up there.

What species were they?

It's too sexy for this comment
Too sexy for this comment
It doesn't need a rhyme.
I completely understand this comment, but it didn't need to be made. It certainly didn't need to be typed into a comment box, posted to the lemmy.world instance, and then federated across the fediverse, then shown here.
Get off my lawn ;-)
These days, it's "didn't need an unfathomable quantity of compute resource to AI slop it into an image meme".

Once had a substitute teacher so stupid she marked "weird" as being spelled wrong

Weirdo

Can anyone explain what's "i before e"?

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
- Heh, onlu rule in English: Memorize them all!
- It isn't often I see Brian Regan bits in the wild. The same thing came to mind.
It's a general pattern someone noticed and then rhymed, that ⟨ie⟩ is more likely to appear than ⟨ei⟩ in English, except after ⟨c⟩. But it is not a real rule, there's no orthographic restriction behind that pattern, not even an underlying phonemic reason. So you're bound to see exceptions everywhere, to the point the pattern is useless as a mnemonic.
- I wouldn't go that far. Sometimes I'm not sure which way around they go, and that will usually lead you the right way.
- I thought it was specifically about words with long e sounds? So "Keith" would be an exception (but it's a name and those are always weird - though "weird" itself is a better example), but most of the stuff on the mug it never meant to apply to. And overall for long e sounds it applies far more often than not. Ultimately english spelling will always be a clusterfuck though.
  And I sure wish people would stop spelling wiener as weiner. The city is called Wien ffs.

On protein supplements

If this was an exhaustive list (and I believe it isn't), "weird" should've been part of the previous sentence.