Can someone please mention.....

here

Says 'recieve' twice.

Don't forget the second part jings - but only when the sound is 'ee'.
Hence weird.

But...weird is an ee sound (sort of)

In this instance it's a case of 'receive' or 'recieve'.

So that's I before e except after c ....except when it isn't

As I said before - repeating myself now!

It's the 'diphthong' that has to rhyme with ee. My teacher said.

I before e except after c, when the diphthong rhymes with ee.

Unless it's 'weird'...

Unless you are running a feisty heist on a weird beige foreign neighbour...

What about protein? Can't say that's not an 'ee' sound.

L U C Y !!!

Come back and shut 'em up fix it.

That's the problem with our English language. It's very illogical. George Bernard Shaw put it well.

"Ghoti is a constructed word used to illustrate irregularities in English spelling. It is a respelling of the word fish, and is intended to be pronounced in the same way (/ˈfɪʃ/), using these sounds:"

gh, pronounced [f] as in tough
o, pronounced [ɪ] as in women
ti, pronounced [ʃ] as in nation

I before e
Except after c
If it sounds like ee.

Feisty heist and beige foreign neighbour are not ee

Words from foreign sources are exceptions to the rule. Not sure where protein come from but it has a furrin look. Ah! Reference dictionary says it is from French/German /Greek - the Greek e + i would be pronounced separately as protee-in, must have got itself elided.

dictionary.reference.com/browse/protein

Simples. What were you worrying about, Jings ?

Now just try explaining the pronunciation of:
Bough, Cough, Though, Thought, Trough, Dough, Joust, Loud, Noun, Would, Youth etc to my DS's Italian in-laws.......

Those spellings tend to be based on old words that had different pronunciations from current ones, e.g. cough is from Middle English coughen, cf Dutch kuchen, German keuchen (küchen?) or keichen to gasp.

This is great and very interesting!

There's no way on earth I can explain that to them thatbags! Over to DS and DDIL for that explanation me thinks

Just tell the Italians that it's the Germanic words they find difficult and that's fine because Italian isn't a Germanic language. Simple explanation