 Welcome to the EndNote Spelling Bee. In this mini-series, I'm following up on the question I asked in my video about spelling. What are your spelling pet peeves? First up, I tackled the dreaded Eye Before E rule. Viewers R. Mori Biaschi and Silk Wacer brought this one up. So the main problem with the Eye Before E except after C rule is that it isn't actually a rule, it's just a mnemonic invented in the 19th century. It doesn't reflect any reality about the phonological histories or etymologies of the words. It's just meant to work in many but not all of the circumstances. And the common formulation of the mnemonic isn't complete anyway, as it should have in its full form some sort of restriction, as in Eye Before E except after C or when sounded as A as in neighbor and way, or Eye Before E except after C when the sound is E. These fuller forms catch some of the exceptions but not all, such as sufficient and plurals of words that end in CY like frequencies, with a C followed by an I, and Cs with an EI pronounced E not A. The underlying problem here is that a number of different vowel sounds are represented by these two letter combinations, vowel sounds that changed in different ways over time and came from a number of different source languages. This is in part a function of the English language having contained over its long history far more distinct vowel sounds than vowel letters to represent them, so that the same couple of vowel combinations were introduced again and again in different contexts as the sounds changed. For instance, the word EIGHT comes from Old English ACHTE or ACHTE, which became ECHTE in Early Middle English, diphthong eyes to ECHTE in Later Middle English because it was followed by a guttural sound, which was then dropped to leave us with Modern English EIGHT. The commonly cited exceptions neighbor and way follow similar paths. A number of words with the EI and IE spellings come from Old French, ultimately from Latin, with a number of different vowel sounds. Latin veina with an E becomes Old French veina and English vein with an A pronunciation, while Latin brevis becomes breath in Old French in Middle English, and brief in Modern English. Latin d'cipera, a prefix form of capra, becomes Old French décevoir and English deceive with an E pronunciation. Latin lycora becomes Old French in Middle English lesir and Modern English leisure. Latin sufficiens, with two distinct vowel sounds, keeps the same IE as it goes from Old French to Modern English sufficient. And finally, the Latin adverb forest produced the medieval Latin adjective foraneus, which becomes Old French foren, and has a number of Middle English forms, such as pharyn, foran, and foren, before settling down as Modern English foren. And that still doesn't cover it all. As viewer The Hard Problem 2 quipped, I before E accept after C and when sounding like A as in neighbor and way, and all throughout August and the month of May, you'll always be wrong no matter what you say. I'll be continuing to respond to your comments and suggestions in more spelling V videos intermittently for the next while, in between other main videos. Thanks for all the responses you've given me lots to work with. As always, you can hear even more etymology and history, as well as interviews with a wide range of fascinating people on the Endless Knot podcast, available on all the major podcast platforms, as well as our other YouTube channel. Thanks for watching.