[R] W-E-I-R-D Weird!
Jim Lemon
jim at bitwrit.com.au
Wed Jul 2 12:45:34 CEST 2008
On Wed, 2008-07-02 at 10:27 +1200, Rolf Turner wrote:
> On 2/07/2008, at 10:15 AM, Bert Gunter wrote:
>
> > Ow ow ow. I can't stand it any longer! "Weird" is one of those weird
> > exceptions in English to the "i before e except after c" rule and
> > is spelled
> > "W-E-I-R-D" .
> >
> > In case you're interested, the other exceptions are seize, inveigle ,
> > either, leisure, neither.
>
> What about weigh and neighbour? :-)
>
> (If you're invoking the codicil ``or when sounded "aye" as in
> neighbour or weigh'', then shouldn't inveigle not be considered
> an exception either?) (Or am I mispronouncing ``inveigle''?)
>
Oh Rolf,
I won't bore you with the other 1759 words with an "ei", but we must
pause to remember George Gershwin's conundrum:
You say "eether" and I say "aither".
You say "neether" and I say "naither".
"Eether", "Aither", "Neether", "Naither"
Let's call the whole thing off...
Jim
More information about the R-help
mailing list