Can someone please mention.....

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

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

This is great and very interesting!

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.

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.......

Simples. What were you worrying about, Jings ?

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

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

L U C Y !!!

Come back and shut 'em up fix it.

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

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

Unless it's 'weird'...

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

As I said before - repeating myself now!

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

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

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

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

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

here

Says 'recieve' twice.