Learn English – Why do we have double letters

doubled-consonantsmeaning

I'm wondering why we have double letters in words that make the same sound as if it were a single letter. For example apple. The pp makes a p sound, and sound the same as if the word was spelt aple.

A few more examples:

  • sell
  • hill
  • fuss
  • watt
  • happy
  • sunny
  • blossom

I've also notices that the double letters make the same sound as if it were a single letter is not entirely true across the board – especially if the repeated letter is a vowel, for example;

  • feet
  • hoop
  • teen
  • spoon
  • beetle

Why is this? Why do some letters have double letters when having a single letter makes the same sound. It seems to only be for words above 3 characters.

From what I've seen, vowels need the double letter to make another sound, but consonants don't.

Best Answer

I'm not a native speaker but I see it this way:

Two consonants in a word give us a different pronunciation like in:

  • apple and aple are different in pronunciation [ˈap(ə)l] and [ˈeɪp(ə)l]
  • little, better (double t sounds like d)
  • ladder, bidder (without the double d, it wouldn't be [a] but [eɪ] instead)
  • well (without the double consonants I think it wouldn't be [w], but [v] instead)
  • sunny (without double n would be pronounced as [sjuni] instead of [sʌni])
  • happy (without the double p would be [hāpi] instead of [hapi])
  • watt (without double t would be [wat] instead of [wɒt])

As with vowels i think it will be:

  • feet and fit are differently pronounced [fiːt] longer i and [fɪt] shorter i. Same works for teen, beetle, tree.
  • hoop, spoon have a longer sounding u. [huːp], [spuːn]. You cant' write spun [spʌn], hup [hʌp], because they are pronounced differently and there is no long u in English as a letter.
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