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Take these three words:
Soup
Super
Supper
The first two words, Soup and Super both begin with the same sound: soo. However the addition of a p in supper changes the pronunciation from soo to suh (short-u). Is there a "rule" in the English language that defines that the double letter modifies the preceding vowel pronunciation? Or is this just one of those "because English is complicated" things?
Vowels before a doubled letter are (almost?) always short. Here are some other examples:
On the other hand, vowels followed by (non-doubled) consonants followed by -e- are (almost?) always long:
This is relevant to the "doubling-up rule", which says to double the terminal consonant letter in single-syllable words when adding a vowel suffix like -er or -ed. This rule helps us differentiate:
