How to form simple past / past participle and gerund

[dreoilín]

Good morning,

First of all, I would like to introduce myself - I am interested to languages in general, and at the moment, I am doing a refresher course in English.

I have recently stumbled over the problem of how to form the simple past / past participle / gerund form of English verbs. I made a rule, and I would like to ask if it is correct:

In case of regular verbs, if one - and not two - stressed vowel is followed by a consonant, the consonant is doubled and then followed by -ed.
Exception: in British English, "to travel" becomes "travelled, travelling" even though the e is unstressed.

examples:
planned, donned, but: leaned, abandoned

 

[GoesStation]

Your rule works in American English for words of more than one syllable.

For one-syllable words, the final consonant is doubled if the presence of the added e would otherwise change the pronunciation.

 

[emsr2d2]

... I am interested [STRIKE]to[/STRIKE] in languages in general, ...

See above.

 

[dreoilín]

Thank you for your advice. I have revised my rule for British English as follows:


If an English word ends in one vowel + one consonant, the final consonant may be doubled when the –ing-form or the –ed-form is spelt.


- This happens in one-syllable words if the –ed-form or the ing-form would entail a pronunciation change, e. g. donning, donned.


- It also happens in words with more than one syllable if the word's stress is on the last syllable and if the –ed-form or the ing-form would entail a pronunciation change, e. g. allotted, allotting


Exception: In British English, there is a gemination of the letter “l“ in words which end in an unstressed –el: e. g. travelling, travelled.

 

[GoesStation]

I've seen the BrE rules but I don't want to comment on them except that I'm pretty sure Brits double the final consonant a lot more often than they would suggest.

If you leave out the last sentence, your rules work in AmE.