There are words like conscience where there is no I sound, but there the I blends with the consonant before and not the E after.
Are there any examples other than friend?
Lieutenant?
‘ient’ words such as efficient, sentient, patient have ie pronounced as a schwa, as does mischievous. Does that count? (there is no I sound).
When there are so many exceptions to grammar rules, then there aren’t really any rules. In the cases of “i before e”, you just have memorize the spellings to know them correctly. One of the many reasons that the English language is one of the harder to master.
“I before e except after c,” only applies when sounded like ee.
Ok, so that old mnemonic is not really as helpful as supposed.
What about the old dipthong rule, “the first one does the talking and the second does the walking”? Leave aside what doing the walking means, does this still work?
Sci-ence. Conceeive. Fieend? Frih-ehnd. Naybor.
The problem is that because of all the various loan words and vowel shifts over time, no rule is consistent because words weren’t formed conforming to rules. General rules of behavior only apply in general.
Vowels are mushy anyway. If we can decipher different dialects and accents, it’s because we recognize variations in vowel sounds and give them a lot of leeway, more so than consonants.
In lieu or any other response I could go on spiel about this.
Yeah, I think English pronunciation rules are basically:
(1) Give it your best shot.
(2) See (1)
“Letters aren’t sound” is generally a good starting point. They might have roughly represented sounds in an accent some time ago.