As I listened to NPR on my morning commute, I heard a story about the Walapai indian "Skywalk" over the Grand Canyon. It sounds really cool (but not for acrophobics!) and I hope to experience it someday. Anyhoo.... I got to thinking about the spelling of the tribe's name, and that instinctively I thought "walapi", not "wallapi". Then I wondered why I thought that, and decided that when dealing with a language other than English, I usually leave out doubled letters such as "ll", "rr", "ss" and so on. Does anyone know why English has these, even though they often have the same sound as a single letter? I realize there are some rules about a v_c_v causing the first vowel to change to short from long (ex: pinning/pining), but that's often not a factor. Spanish has "rr" and "ll", but they are distinct phonemes from the single letters. :0)

There are very few rules indeed when it comes to the vagaries of English spelling, but one thing that double consonants tend to signify in English is a different in the proceeding vowel's quality: e.g., cf. many with mannish.

[Fixed typos.]

Sometimes we inherit the double letters from the language we got the word from. Words like illegal and immoral we got from Latin where the il and im respectively were from a prefix in- with the n assimilated by the following letter.

You did this intentionally? prceeding? Is pre- or proceeding or both?

I understood that part perfectly; it was the ules that I wondered about.

Hey, some people are too busy to be bothered checking every detail.

The ule sat in the elm tree
At early fall of night
And yond behind the distant hills
the cuckoo clock replied:
"cuckoo, cuckoo" and so on and so on.

'Ules' are reputedly wise birds, so perhaps the meaning is there is very little wisdom when it comes to the vagaries of English. That would fit.

The ule is wisest in July
The cuckoo cooks in June
and rather than a wise comment
I'd see a lame reply.

Speaking of vagaries... why isn't it spelled "vagueries"? Truly it looks funny to me (vagaries)! I don't see it often, but it's made several appearances on this thread. It has the same root as "vague", and one would think it would follow that spelling lead... Oh well! :0)

Because vague came to us through the French and you know how well they spell. Vagary came to us more or less straight from Latin. And they could spell just fine.