I before E Except After Keith

It’s not an odd observation that the English language is odd, and because of this, we expect other languages to be equally so. This is not necessarily or even often true.

As an English speaker and German beginner, Deutsch words with IE or EI in them are often a crapshoot. Sometimes I say (for either) EE, other times EYE. There’s no reason for me to get this wrong — in German, EI and IE are always consistent:

WIEN (the city we call Vienna) is pronounced VEEN

WEIN (the lovely drink Wine) is pronounced VINE

These words do not have a common origin in antiquity. Vienna is not called WIEN because the Romans had vineyards there; it is likely from the Celtic word for “Bright” or “Fair”. On the other hand, WEIN comes exactly from where you would expect.

In the languages I’ve been exposed to — French, Italian, German and a very very tiny amount of Japanese — you have a reasonably good (but not perfect) chance of pronouncing words correctly if you know the rules of the language.

In English, you’re on your own.

— Toronto, November 2015