>>I wonder of the reason the US is so keen to drop double l's in the middle of words is because people who's first language is Spanish will read ll as "ly" or "dj" - so it might be easier to avoid them. We have very few Spanish speakers, so it is less of an issue here
Jo, we in the colonies were dropping double letters long before the relatively recent huge wave of Hispanic immigration. This is probably a romantic notion on my part, but here goes (drawing again on Portuguese, the only other language I know well):
Brazilian Portuguese also drops double letters. For example, "list" in Portugal is "tabella" but in Brazil it's "tabela." I'm wondering if there's not some kind of free-spirited New World sort of collective unconscious that led these two groups of colonizers to simplify spelling. Unfortunately, the fact that Canadians spelled exactly as y'all do in the UK dilutes my argument a bit, but... maybe there's still something to it.
