"How non-English speakers are taught this crazy English grammar rule you know but have never heard of"

"Adjectives, writes the author, professional stickler Mark Forsyth, “absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac.”... 

The fact is, a lot of English grammar rules only come as a surprise to those who know them most intimately.

Learning rules doesn’t always work, however. Forsyth also takes issue with the rules we think we know, but which don’t actually hold true. In a lecture about grammar, he dismantles the commonly held English spelling mantra “I before E except after C.” It’s used to help people remember how to spell words like “piece,” but, Forsyth says, there are only 44 words that follow the rule, and 923 that don’t. His prime examples? “Their,” “being,” and “eight.”

http://qz.com/773738/how-non-english-speakers-are-taught-this-crazy-english-grammar-rule-you-know-but-youve-never-heard-of/

Yes! I hate the "i before e" rule, I spent all of elementary school getting in my head about whether it was about exception or not.