QI | 'I' Before 'E' Except After... 

"you Cannot Be that stupid!" oh, Steven, never NEVER underestimate human stupidity xD

*_The Majority of the United States of America has entered the chat_*

@@Ward1706 Canada thanks you for using "United States of" there. :)

Says the man who decided to wear that ridiculous looking headwear

@@Ward1706 entirety*

Another pythonesque one is, “🎶They say of the acropolis where the Parthenon is...🎶”

@@travisinthetrunk that one is almost viking spam level

more like abbot and costello

Yes!

Society of putting things on top of other things? Yeah man :D

im not sure it was unintentional

It was intentional alright!

@@RJF8888 I can tell you're a fun person

Completely unintentional and not at all brilliant

It was absolutely intentional.

Sean Grand “Is this the party to whom I am speaking ...?”

These are not the ones you are looking for.

Ah yes, the floor is made out of floor

and the ceiling is made of ceiling

The deleted scene from a new hope

Better to stay quiet and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

I think that's exactly what he says in the episode after this clip ends xD

Have you seen Daniel Radcliffe talk about the worlds oldest magic trick earlier in this show, naming the Egyptian scrool the trick was first mentioned in ? He certainly doesn't come across as stupid!

cucumber is right, when they don't cut the clip short Daniel does say something about he was just keeping quiet because he didn't know either.

@@chibikomeh It's not often that one gets to use the phrase "cucumber is right" without sounding completely bonkers xD

He had him deceived.

Lee: Hold my pint...

Reminds me of Alan's "i couldn't possibly sink as low as Stephen's expectations of me" xD

It’s right up there with “this can’t get worse” 😂

Yeah. I'm surprised Stephen didn't consider that.

lmao what's the actual word

And “weird”

you still have the old google+ profile pic?

STEADINGS

I think it was "Oh, I C" actually, still not sure where the E comes into it though...

It should have been "Ee, I see".

Griffin Reviews. They way Alan and Lee say anything is completely different: non-verbally or physically, as well as the tone and timbre of their voices 🎙🎭

Lee Mack's style is combative it is part of his routine to wind up everyone where as Alan has been in the game (comedy & QI) a long time and knows how it works

Lee is fantastic. He is absolutely hilarious on WILTY.

Because Alan is actually competent beneath it all. Lee on the other hand...

@@donniedouglas6837 I agree Lee is more suited to that type of game show

But they are used in English, no? so they ARE English words.

Phil Immerfall they could either be loan words or borrowed parts. .... that’s the English language in a nutshell lol

Yeah words like _hacienda_ or _Madeira_ should be nowhere close to the top of the list of good examples to debunk this rule of thumb. And if they are, then the rule is actually a pretty good one.

@@siukong Apart from "species", the other three "cie" examples on the board are pretty terrible examples, because the I and E and "concierge", "hacienda" and "glacier" are so clearly differentiated in their pronunciation you don't particularly need a rule to tell you which order to shove them in.

​@@eIucidate Paper is so obviously different from plastic, you don't particularly need a sign to tell you which recycling bin to shove it in. Or you might as well just put the sign for plastic over the bin for paper too, 'cause the plastic sign _obviously_ doesn't apply to the bin for paper, I mean look at it; it's so clearly full of paper!

driven

@@simonr-vp4if OIC.

@@simonr-vp4if either or

Either/ or. 'He must have driven' (conditional tense)/ 'He drove. (Past tense). 'He must have drove' is mixing tenses, and so is grammatically incorrect.

Yeah, the way to remember that one is "I before C, and then the E"

Touché...

There’s a website, think it was merriam Webster but I’m not sure, that had a “rhyme” for all the exceptions for “I before e” and it was probably about 20 lines long, with the last line basically saying “or whenever the English language decides”

And everybody clapped!

That kid's name...?

oh yeah! I learned it as "...except when like A as in neighbor and weigh" but that was it, only slightly less inaccurate...

And 'reiterate'

I before e except after c and sounded as a as in neighbor and weigh. That is the full saying, and it annoys me people just leave out part of the rule and then call it a bad rule

@@Akakiryuushin Weird.

@@Akakiryuushin Trying to remember such a long and convoluted rule is not worth the trouble, so yes I'd still say it's a bad rule.

Yeah, but there's no C in any of those words, though

Exactly

@@beavisbutt-headson3223 so why isn't the I before the E?

@@JohnSmith-us4pj wooosh.

Because it isn't!!! This is why I struggled in school...

Sort of like Sandi when she tells Bill Bailey to "shut the f*ck up"

But what do they say about the Acropolis where the Parthenon is?

@@Harambae613 That there are no straight lines.

@@c0ldc0ne whateva

English is a fairly easy language in general, so you complicate the rules to make it seem more difficult hehe

It's easy because there are so few rules, and those we have make absolutely no sense and are little more than the equivalent of "because I said so, now be quiet!!!" of an exasperated parent losing their rag with one of their spawn.

@@peterclarke7240 Indeed. I've been teaching English as a second language for over ten years and the thing that makes it difficult for students is the inconsistency of the pronunciation. Most everything else is either the same or easier than other languages.

@@acmiguens I don't agree. For me English was extremely difficult when I started learning it. It is not only the extremely random spelling and pronounciation but also in grammar there are a lot of difficulties.

@@ankavoskuilen1725 The difficulty will vary from student to student, no doubt. I'm from Brazil, where we can't seem to get people to get better at English. Why? Most teachers can't teach. Either they don't know what they're supposed to teach or they just vomit grammar and hope the students will understand. There are a few exceptions that prove the rule. So maybe at least part of your difficulty was not your fault at all :)

"seize" is probably the most famous exception.

The rule I was always taught as "I before E, except after C, **when the sound is EE".** So "neighbour", "weigh", and all the words mentioned in the clip except "species" and "caffeine" aren't exceptions.

@@beeble2003that's wierd innit?

@@asheep7797 The vowel in "weird" is a diphthong, "ee-er", not a pure "ee" sound. So it doesn't fit the "when the sound is ee" clause.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was taught. They really dropped the ball on this one.

"... except after _c,_ or when sounded like 'ay' as in _neighbor_ and _weigh."_ Of course, _weird_ is a famous counterexample. But then, it is weird.

Exactly. The rule isn't supposed to encompass every single word that has I and E. They had 'being' as one of the words that breaks the rule. Almost like they're being intentionally difficult.

He is super intelligent, but I do think he is actually having a bit of a brain fart here just like i was the entire time

@@felixperrin3795 yeah but there must have been a bit of deliberate pissing-off.

He is but like anyone he gets confused sometimes, possibly he’s had a long day. I think he started off genuinely trying, got lost, started to just troll instead, then had regrets, but as he’s quite a good actor it’s hard to know.

@@Lumibear. I think that's probably how it went too. I think he was genuinely confused initially. But then he realized part way through and just kept up the gag.

He's quick witted, but I don't think he's a deep thinker.

When they said, “I before e except after c” it sounded weird because they didn’t finish it.

I never learnt that rhyme, but I learnt "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking." And then this is an exception to that, which only applies when i and e make an "ee" sound.

@@Jivvi--I learned that one, too. Many years later, when my youngest child was learning to read, her version of it ran like this: When two vowels go a-walkin', the first one does the talkin' cause the second one is too shy. And then she'd all but blush in shyness. It was so cute to see.

I think that was John Lloyd, in "The Making of QI" (2011).

I can't listen to his version because I recognise the voice from too many things. I prefer Jim Dale's version :)

@@acmiguens lol I can't stand the way Jim Dale says Hermione. Doesn't really matter though, because His Dark Materials ruined me for audiobooks.

@@treyk9007 as in 'it is so bad' or 'it is the best ever'?

@@treyk9007 I second gvr beers question. dou you mean ruined as in its amazing or terrible?

@@treyk9007 Personally I love stephen fry to bits but I hate his harry potter audiobooks because he just can't do the female voices, he has two voices for female characters and they are both extremely irritating. I know doing good voices for the other gender is very tricky but its so crucial a skill in audiobook narration that I just can't enjoy his ones.

that does make sense but then there’s words like weird that doesn’t fit

@@strawbbymillie yeah but that's just a weird word, isn't it? 😉

I see what you did there, and I like it 😂

Ok, but who is on first?

@@user-rh7nd5xv7y who

What?

@@user-rh7nd5xv7y He's on second

@@TheWildmanden Who's on second?

Height, weight?

@@JLBat1993 the rest of the rule goes unless it sounds like 'a' like in neighbor and weigh. Height is a weird one.

...............or just stick with "sound it out" instead of this convoluted "it's good enough except when it's not but even then it's still good enough but sound it out if not even though it is"

Thing is, they don't look at _why_ the words break the rule. Being isn't "one" word per se. It is be and the ing-ending. It's an edge case, where one could rightly dispute that it is for good reason an exception. Science comes from latin. A language which heavily influenced languages that are well known for their exceptions to the rules, even in their own languages, than their adherence. Loanwords obviously can't count, as they are typically an offset for language evolution. I wonder how much percent of words that evolved from the germanic language there are that adhere to the rule and wether the rule would be correct if we looked at those.

@@Finsternis.. This is nonsense. Virtually all words in the English language were originally loan words. Serpent comes from French, but no one doubts that it's now an English word. The only difference is how recently something came over from another language. Recent loanwords aren't as readily accepted as part of the language in their own right, but they are. There are no reliable rules of pronunciation in English, that's just a fact.

No, it's Cieling!

@@Luigiman-rc9fi Is it ceyling?

Charlie Tuff Sealing

Brian Regan?

That's a tough rule

I before E except after C, when the sound is "ee" is a rule that works pretty well in practice.

I think he was counting on ‘I before e’ to be well known enough that he didn’t have to explain that bit.

mack got it, you can tell, cos if he didnt, he wouldnt have been talking. his whole comedy style depends on being argumentative

I tihnk maybe Lee just doesn't know how to spell ceiling.

@@Hoganply You mean cieling

Actually, Alan talked over Stephen when he was trying to explain it, so it wasn't quite as clear.

Oh, interesting.

*klaxon* Wearing a fez and driving tiny cars is the Shriners, not the Masons.

@@SavageGreywolf Fixed.

@@SavageGreywolf Shriners are old, high ranking Masons.

TBF fezzes are cool. Or so a physician friend of mine told me.

*ceiling his fate

I bet many people still don't understand what Stephen Fry is getting at and exactly why Mack was so confused.

@@Tridentus The I before E is the rule, the before C part is the exception. If there is no C then the exception doesn't come into play, just the rule applies. The point was that more words break the rule than uphold it.

@@bren106 I'm sorry, but you didn't get it either. The "after C" (not before) part is not the exception, it's just part of the rule. The rule is "I before E, except after C", which means that words containing bie, die, fie, gie, hie, ..., wie, zie, or *cei* are _according_ to the rule. And words containing bei, dei, fei, gei, hei, ..., wei, zei, or *cie* are _exceptions_ to the rule. But there are more of the latter, so the rule is silly, which was the point Stephen made.

But I admit the video is a bit confusing, as in the beginning they only seem to discuss the "except C" part, i.e. only words that either have cei (that are adhering to the rule) or cie (that are the exceptions). Only later, and only shortly, they discuss the words that have, e.g., wie (adhering) or wei (exceptions). So maybe this was also the reason why Lee Mack was so confused about that.

Exactly! "I before E except after C IN AN E SOUND"

I recall "I before e, except after c, except as in ā as in neighbor and weigh."

@Mario The rhyme only had the ā exception, but there are so many more!

@Mario We're talking about English! The rules were made to be broken!

Yes. They got this one completely wrong. The main rule is that two vowels pronounced together make the sound that the first vowel makes when it's on its own. This rule is an exception to that, which only applies to words where an i and an e make an "ee" sound. Caffeine is an exception, but weir and weird are just following the normal rule because they don't make that sound. For most of the others, even that rule isn't relevant, because the vowels are pronounced separately.

Series H according to the info.

Coincience

No it isn't. It's from the H Series.

I was first taught "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking," and then, as a rare exception to that, only in the very specific situation where e and i make an "ee" sound "i before e except after c. The vast majority of the supposed exceptions aren't in that category, so the rule is irrelevant.

Weird.

@@drafezard7315 Weird is not pronounced eee as in ceiling, neither in northern or southern British accent.

yes same here

Yep that is the rule that should be taught, probably is taught but most remember jut the first part of the rule. And there are exception to these after C part of the rule.

Not only that, but Stephen's counter-examples are all dipthongs, so not even within the scope of the rule. And as Alan points out, loan words, so again not within the scope of the rule.

@@daddymuggle Weird.

@@daddymuggle This is nonsense. Virtually all words in the English language were originally loan words. Serpent comes from French, but no one doubts that it's now an English word. The only difference is how recently something came over from another language. Recent loanwords aren't as readily accepted as part of the language in their own right, but they are. There are no reliable rules of pronunciation in English, that's just a fact.

"I before E, except after C; what a strange society..."

To disprove the rule, it's sufficient to have one counterexample

I had trouble with "either". Depending how you pronounce it, it both is an exception and isn't.

“Seize” is basically always pronounced with the same “ee” /iː/ as in words like “fleece” as far as I can tell.

Burning Elsen Ah, true!

Interestingly enough they both have their root in the Latin "caelum" which means heaven or sky!