In an Email service on grammer and usage I receive from tipworld@boing.topica.com, came this discussion of spelling, which I paraphrase:
Unlike British and Canadian English, which double the last-letter consonant when adding a suffix to a root word which ends in a single consonant preceding a single vowel, US English usually bases consonant doubling on whether the last syllable is stressed in pronunciation. Thus, "traveled" and "bigoted," (accent on first syllable) but "repelled" and "allotted" (accent on second syllable). And, of course, plenty of exceptions.
Had anyone out there noticed the pattern? Why did it develop? Me, I've been blindly memorizing spellings or having to look them up. Duh.
i've used tipworld's "BabyCenter" site many times, but never realized the extent of the information available. if anyone is interested, the url is http://www.tipworld.com
thanks for sharing that grammar rule; the few words that i tried held fast to the rule (though i'm sure twusm will come up with some exceptions in short order). it's nice to at least have a better-than-50/50 shot at the correct spelling on those rare occasions when spellcheck or atomica aren't at hand (you know, like in the olden days when we corresponded with long-distance friends using tree products).
Dear Sparteye: I remember having to commit to memory a rule about that. But in spite of the rule, I still have problems. For instance my dictionary gives Chagrin, chagrined, chagrining. The last two just don't look right, but chagrinning looks worse.
I believe the general rule was that you would double the consonant to preserve a short vowel, thus, compel, compelled but compete, competed. Then US'ns decided that it really didn't matter if the final syllable was unaccented so we dropped the rule.
i'm quite certain this is going to come out exactly as garbled as it is in my mind, but i'll attempt this query:
In the case of 'chagrined' as a verb, as in atomica's example, 'He was chagrined at the poor sales of his book', we label 'chagrined' a verb. this suggests that if we were to replace 'chagrined' with disappointed, mortified, saddened, elated, pleased, etc., they would all be considered verbs. If we said, then, that "He was happy with his book sales", what part of speech would happy be? i'm sure this is basic grammar to most of you, but i'm at a loss. Furthermore, what part of speech is "was"? i was thinking it would be a transitive verb, but a google search suggests that i'm wrong. Also, what part of speech, specifically, would 'chagrined' be in the example cited above? a verbal object of some sort?
Part of the problem is that parts of the verb be have two distinct functions in English. One of their uses is copulative (stop sniggering at the back there), they join a subject and a complement (which is usually a noun or an adjective). Examples: She's a doctor. He's delirious. The other use is as an auxilary verb making some compound verb forms, the progressive and passive forms. (He was running hard because he was being chased.)
In some sentences it is not clear whether we have copulative be followed by an adjective or auxiliary be followed by the third form of the verb. For example: The paper was torn. Is torn here part of the verb tear (Somebody tore the paper) or an adjective describing the state of the paper? Only the context can tell us which.
I don't know what part of speech was is, but I know a whole list of them, memorized in school; be, am, is, are, was, were, being, been, have, had, may, might, must, seem, shall, should, can, could, will, would, did, doing, done... Ah, my expensive education showing through, I know a lot, I just don't know what it is I know.
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