Why was the letter 'U' dropped from many words such as colour, odour etc?  And also why is the letter 'l' spelt as a singular, when in British English it's used as a double 'll' in most words, cancelled, traveller, modelled etc?
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Considering that Webster , is there a recognised tipping point (year, decade, etc.) that marked the move from traditional British spelling to Webster's American? Was this shift a gradual but chaotic process or was it a deliberate and possibly collective decision taken by the educational institutions, the media, or the government of the time? In other words, how did the shift come about?
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Lately, something has struck me.  I've been hearing several expressions in English, some clearly borrowed from French and preserving their noun-adjective form.  Some examples are:  Attorney General Secretary General Court Martial Notary Public   I suspect there are more that I have missed.  However, in each of the 4 cases listed above, I feel 'OK' saying them the 'English' way; that is, adjective-noun, which is the way we almost always do things except for these borrowed phrases.  One might receive a statement from the General Attorney, or be sent to a Martial Court.  My father is actually a lawyer and does indeed describe himself as a Public Notary.  Doing things this way makes the plural sound a lot more sensible in English, too; which sounds better: General Secretaries, or Secretaries General?  How common is it for people to flip these borrowed phrases around and say them the more standard English adjective-noun way?  Might it be clearer in the long run if we did so?
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Why have a letter in a word when it’s silent in pronunciation, like the b in debt?  Can anyone please clarify my uncertainty here?
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I've seen a contraction of two words.  I can't see why it wouldn't've been possible to have been contracted twice.  Is it possible and how should it be punctuated?  Update:  Ok, to sum up the answers so far   This appears in spoken British and American English It is from one of the lower  Even if spoken this way sometimes, it isn't really written as a double contraction, except as written speech in fiction. And from my own googling in , it appears most written forms are old British words, often nautical like fo'c'sle.
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Example of such words are:     As far as I know, at least in American English, words that have single syllable double their ending consonant letters when modified.  Such as:  hop - hopping cut - cutting map - mapped   Another part of my question is, are there any exemptions to this rule? Does this rule also apply in British English? If yes, what are the exemptions? If not, what rules apply in regard to this specific matter?  If there are no such rules, perhaps the only way to go is by memorization. Could anyone cite me a real good exhaustive list of such words?
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Some verbs can have double Ls in the gerund form; for example:   modeling; modelling   traveling; travelling   Which form should we use, or which form is used more in the literature?
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When writing (a blog post, script, etc..) what is the proper way to indicate two or more instances of a single letter? For instance, in Monty Python's Bookshop Sketch:     C: I wonder if you might have a copy of "Rarnaby Budge"?      P: No, as I say, we're right out of Edmund Wells!      C: No, not Edmund Wells - Charles Dikkens.      P: (pause - eagerly) Charles Dickens??      C: Yes.      P: (excitedly) You mean "Barnaby Rudge"!      C: No, "Rarnaby Budge" by Charles Dikkens.  That's Dikkens with two Ks, the      well-known Dutch author.      P: (slight pause) No, well we don't have "Rarnaby Budge" by Charles Dikkens      with two Ks, the well-known Dutch author, and perhaps to save time I      should add that we don't have "Karnaby Fudge" by Darles Chickens, or      "Farmer of Sludge" by Marles Pickens, or even "Stickwick Stapers" by Farles      Wickens with four M's and a silent Q!!!!!  Why don't you try W. H. Smith's?      C: Ah did, They sent me here.   I had always believed that plural never uses an apostrophe before the 's' (it's only used for possession), but I have rarely seen in written material the format "four Ms". (On a side note, whoever wrote  also used "two Ks".)  On a side note, and perhaps this should be a separate question, if a Compact Disc is a CD, then two Compact Discs would be two CDs right? (I see "CD's" written everywhere)
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I noticed that British people sometimes use me instead of my. For example, Liam Gallagher does it quite often. Example:  The wind was strong I have nearly lost me pants  What is a story behind this alteration? Is it appropriate in formal language? Do people really speak like that? Or is this a dialect rather than a widely spread manner?
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Why do people sometimes substitute x for letters in a word?   Examples:   Xing Xmas Xfr
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I have seen some people using them while others not. Should I still use a suspended hyphen in the following snippet?     I have used upper- and lowercase in my script.
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I often catch myself trying to write ?explaination, phonetically spelling the word in my head. To my chagrin I get part way through and have to stop myself.  So I’m wondering why is the i dropped? I can’t think of other words ending ‑ain that take the ‑ation suffix for comparison.
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Most linguists agree that the letter R in middle English was trilled, but why and when did people replace it with untrilled one like ⟨ɹ⟩ in "red", or even become "almost" silent like in "her (British accent)"? Also, why is modern R rounded? For example, rain and "rwain" are pronounced the same, proving that modern R actually has an invisible w after it.
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"Y'all" is the famous southern US form of the 2nd person plural.  The Brooklyn / Italian-American "youse" might be another.  While the existence and usage of "y'all" has been addressed somewhat thoroughly here:  , I've found nothing else on EL&amp;U regarding 2nd person plural forms in other English dialects.  I know there was a dual form in Old English () does that survive in any of the dialects in the Danelaw?  Do Scots / Gaelic / Welsh / Australian / other dialects retain any type of 2nd person plural / dual in modern usage?
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When pluralizing family (last) names that also happen to be common English words, does the pluralization follow the same rules as the common word?  For example, "the Smith family" can be pluralized as "the Smiths", but what if the family name is "Wolf" or "Fish"?  Would the correct pluralization be "the Wolfs" or "the Wolves"?
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I am trying to break a word down into syllables and am not quite sure how to do it for English. Some problems I face:     The letter-to-sound rules are not one-to-one. As an example, notice that z"ea"l and "ee"l are different in orthography but map to the same sounds.   English has a large number of foreign words incorporated into it, which makes "sticking" to a certain set of rules all the more difficult.    So my question is: 1. Are there any definite rules for breaking a word in English down into its constituent syllables (CV, CVV, CCV etc.?). 2. What is the "gold-standard" (something used by a majority of the community) on this?
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Why is it that the "ow" in now makes the /aʊ/ sound while "ow" in snow makes the /oʊ/ sound? Has this always been, was it spelled differently and then changed, or was it spelled this way but the sound changed?
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In English, generic reference takes three possible forms:  A. Cats are cute. B. A cat is cute. C. The cat is cute.  But the names of nationalities seem to me to make an exception to this rule. As far as I know, when referring to all the members of a nation, you can only use the C version: The Italians are musical, or The French are posh, or The British are cold. Why is it that in this case only C is considered grammatically correct? If all the Italians, or all the French, or all the British are musical, posh, or cold, why can't we also say:  A. *Italians are... // *French are... // *British are...  or  B. *An Italian is... // *A French is... // *A British is...  ?