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Comments

paul

probly from regnum or similar word

gail

Reign comes from regnum and rein comes from retinere, meaning to retain.

gail

But I was wondering about the spelling rule.

CraigC

The exception is the rule in English.:)

JJM

These words came into the English language long before some genius thought up the wholly arbitrary spelling convention "i before e except after c".

The "ei" was simply an attempt to represent the sound "ay" in written fom.

JJM

Don't forget:

weigh/weight

freight

sleigh

and so forth.

gail

Actually, there's more to the spelling rule, which people often forget. I'm waiting to see if anyone knows the rest of the mnemonic.

iamnot

When the i and the e are together in a word and are pronounced like Long A, the e must come before the i.

seize, weird, neither, either, foreign, sovereign, forfeit, counterfeit, leisure, heifer, protein, geiger (as in 'counter'), height, sleight, feisty, seismograph, poltergeist, kaleidoscope

Jenny

Show offs!!!! :-)

JJM

English spelling is a catastrophe.

A delightful one - it's a particular eccentricity of our written language that I love* - but a catastrophe nonetheless.

* In part because it drives spelling reform cranks nuts but mainly because our written words represent a visual, forensic history of how language changes.

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