running with paper

First it was prepostions. A morning read of my local paper informed me that my teachers had been wrong about the whole “don’t end a sentence with a preposition” rule. The link above seems to indicate people have rallied against that rule for quite a bit longer than I or my teachers have been alive.

Now, it’s the “i before e” rhyme … gack. My kids are right – English is such a weird language. But it’s fun to learn, and explore with exploding young brains. Not just in the rules of the language, but in the way their little brains wrap around the rules.

But there it is; “I before E, except after C”; most people remember only that bit. I recall the second part; “or when sounded like a as in neighbor or weigh” – but the last part is new to me: “; and except seize and seizure and also leisure, weird, height, and either, forfeit, and neither.”

The author of that last page says the rule covers “most” cases; but only if you remember the whole thing, I expect, or grammarians wouldn’t be taking the discard of this rhyme under consideration.

Then again, one less thing to teach/unteach the next generation. I’ll dig up some of my old favorites though, like “Her first nurse works early …”, maybe work out rules for young punsters, and work on teaching them more fun with homonyms.