Because English is three languages in a trench coat.

The rule that I was taught as a kid was “I before E except after C only if the sound is ee”

It catches all of the examples on the mug except “weird” which gets a pass in my book because it’s weird (Keith’s excluded because proper nouns don’t follow rules). It doesn’t catch “caffeine” but the “ei” in “caffeinated” isn’t pronounced ee where I come from.

I’ve never heard the “ay” rule but it doesn’t seem to catch as many words as the “not ee” rule.

I’m sorry… foreign and neighbor do not use the same sound

Foreign does not use the same sound as neighbor.

nAYbor

forEN

Not if the rules don't fucking work lol.

Honestly I wish we would just stop teaching stupid ‘rules’ like this. English is easier to just remember than to try to suss out some sort of rule set by which you can magically spell a word you just heard or magically pronounce a word you have only read. I hated being told to sound shit out when I was a kid.

It’s like “‘c’s make a ‘k’ or ‘s’ noise, sound it out”: Pacific Ocean

Fucking really?