[18:21:18] it starts in 10 minutes (right @Sannita ?) (re @Sannita: Hi all! Our next Volunteers' Corner will be held on December 4, at 18:30 UTC. [18:21:18] [18:21:20] If you have questions or ideas to discuss, or you...) [18:21:38] yup! [18:21:52] yes (re @Nicolas: it starts in 10 minutes (right @Sannita ?)) [18:22:19] I'm there 🎉 [18:22:52] I'll join in a few minutes, got something to fix home first [18:34:41] The meeting is on now! You're still in time to join :) (re @Sannita: Hi all! Our next Volunteers' Corner will be held on December 4, at 18:30 UTC. [18:34:42] [18:34:44] If you have questions or ideas to discuss, or you...) [19:11:57] following the chat just now, I think the rule "ending with a single consonant" indeed does not works, see this query on Lexemes : https://w.wiki/8Nui wgere there is a lot of counterexamples (ping @lucaswerkmeister ), it seems that at least the vowel before needs to be short also... (but again not enough and maybe not always also?) [19:12:27] if an English grammarian knows the rule, please share it ;) [19:17:19] Does "bad" have a short vowel? Because it's "baddest", right? [20:20:51] "bad" does have a short vowel [20:21:01] what was it about though? [20:21:44] Finding a rule when the comparative and superlative in English adjectives get their final consonant doubled [20:22:47] generally when the vowel before is short, in order to keep it short (but it's english, so there's probably tons of exceptions, as usual) [20:24:01] Is there a way to find out whether the vowel is short based on the writing of the word? [20:24:10] in writing that would normally be a single vowel followed by one or more consonants (other than w/y which are part of a diphthong) [20:29:55] when I spent far too much time many years ago browsing through my dictionary investigating english spelling/pronunciation correlations, I came to the conclusion that when determining vowel length, english generally acts as if "e" at the end were still pronounced even though it's not, and if a syllable with a single vowel ends with a consonant, it has a short vowel, and if not, it has a long one [20:31:22] I think of them as "spelling syllables", since they're based on the spelling, rather than the actual pronunciation... I've never found anything that actually talks about that behaviour though, so if anyone does know of something, I'd love to know [20:35:24] (an example of what I mean would be "pin" and "pine", where "pin" has a short vowel and "pine" has a long vowel, if "pine" were two syllables, pi-ne, then the long vowel there would make sense) [20:38:20] (and then "pin" becomes "pinning" when you add -ing, so that it's pin-ning still with a short vowel, otherwise you'd get pi-ning with a long vowel) [20:38:35] and if there's more than one vowel, that's normally a long vowel or diphthong, so you don't need to double anything to keep it short [20:45:42] I know that dutch does something similar too, where a single consonant at the end makes the vowel short and they do something similar with doubling consonants in words to keep vowels short, but for german if there's a single consonant at the end the vowel's still long [20:48:17] oh and in english, the behaviour after L depends on whether you're using british or american spellings, american spellings use a single L in places where british spellings would double it [22:25:34] I wonder if any adjectives in -id double the d (since it does not occur in arid, stupid etc) [22:32:20] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/words-that-end-in-idd I guess not, these words don't fit your description [22:50:22] yes that site only has middest which is apparently not a superlative adjective form [23:04:23] this seems like it should cover any cases that I can think of [23:04:24] .*[^aeio]([aeiou][bfglmnpt]|[aeou]d) [23:08:13] for American English [23:08:14] .*[^aeiou]([aeiou][bfglmnpt]|[aeou]d) [23:08:15] (American English does seem to use carefullest but has cruelest instead of cruellest)