<<However, as to Lazar's suggestions, I must confess as to be slightly confused about where the logic comes from. Why should we put a double L at the end of "control" (which ends in a long vowel), but have a single L at the end of "egg", "odd" etc. (which end in short vowels)? I would rather have "controle" and leave "egg" and "odd" and "err" and such alone, if we're going to be changing any of them.>>
Well I should preface this by saying that I'm *not* actually advocating these spelling reforms in the first place - it's just more of a thought experiment really - but for what it's worth, I'll try to explain my suggestions:
They follow the principle that "l" can be doubled at the ends of words (like "roll", "stall", "ball"), while other consonants *generally* cannot. (I'm leaving "ck" out of this for the moment.)
The "l" of control *is* doubled when inflection is added ("controller", "controlling"), and "l" is a consonant that can be doubled at the ends of words, so I think it would be more consistent for the uninflected word to be "controll".
In American English, a reform has added doubled "l"s like this in certain words:
"fulfil, fulfilling" < "fulfill, fulfilling"
"enrol, enrolling" < "enroll, enrolling"
And my suggestion would apply this reform more consistently:
"control, controlling" < "controll, controlling"
"compel, compelling" < "compell, compelling"
But as for my suggestions of "egg, odd, err" < "eg, od, er", these follow the principle that certain consonants, like "g", "d", and "r", are almost never doubled at the ends of words. There's a host of words which end in a single "g", "d", or "r", but have doubled consonants in inflected forms: "bag, bagging"; "sad, sadder", "pad, padding", "infer, inferring". Doubled "g"s, "d"s, and "r"s at the ends of words are rare in English spelling - we don't have many words that are spelled like *bagg, *sadd, *inferr.
The reason why "egg, odd, err" have doubled consonants is because English, at some point in its history, developed a prohibition against 2-letter words that were not function words. I'd like to drop this prohibition in order to make consonant doubling patterns more consistent.
"Egg<eg", formerly an exception to the rule, is now consistent with:
"beg"
"leg"
"bag"
"hag"
"log"
etc.
"Odd<od", formerly an exception to the rule, is now consistent with:
"god"
"pod"
"pad"
"bed"
etc.
"Err<er", formerly an exception to the rule, is now consistent with other Latin-derived words like:
"infer"
"confer"
"inter"
My goal is not necessarily to be any more consistent with the depiction of long vowels versus short vowels, but simply to make the existing spelling system more consistent with respect to consonant doubling.
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