What are Double Letters in English?

We sometimes meet double letters in English spelling, for example “ll” in “yellow” and “tt” in “getting”. Some pairs are more common than others, while some do not appear at all (see below). Double letters are pronounced together as one sound. We do not pronounce each letter individually. A pair of letters which represents one sound is called a digraph. Consonant digraphs represent one consonant sound. They usually make the preceding vowel letter
short, e.g. the short i in “swimming” is due to “mm”. If you have a cvc word (con-vowel-con) like “dot” and you want to add a suffix, e.g. “-ed” or “-ing”, you need to double the final consonant “t” to keep the vowel short: “dotted”, “dotting”; otherwise we would naturally read the words with a long eu sound: “doted”, “doting” – a totally different verb – due to vcv rule.

Vowel digraphs are two vowel letters that represent one vowel sound: “ee” and “oo” represent the very common long vowel sounds ee and oo, e.g. in “feet” and “noon”. “oo” also often represents the short uu sound, e.g. in “book” and “good”. The other vowel digraphs – “aa”, “ii”, and “uu” – rarely occur, while “yy” does not occur at all. In this study we’re dealing with normal content words, not compound words, e.g. “bookkeeping”. In this word we count the vowel digraph “ee”, but not the “kk”, formed when the two words meet. It is not a natural digraph.

Some words contain DOUBLE double letters, for example: “woollen”, “balloon”, “tattoo”, and others, below.

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