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Guest Posted 22 years ago
Grammar

Adding ed

Good Morning,
I am an ESL teacher with a question from our grammar lesson today.

Working with the simple past tense of regular verbs today, we encounter this guideline in our book:

For a one-syllable verb ending in consonant + vowel + consonant, double the final consonant and add -ed: stopped.

In the excercise to practice this is the word chew. I don't believe we spell it chewwed; but I was at a loss to explain to my puzzled students why not. Could you please explain this mystery?

Thank you in advance,

A Beginning High Adult School Instructor
  

Top answer

Maybe it doesn't work when it ends in w: jaw - jawed chew - chewed bow - bowed row - rowed flow - flowed

— Buggah

  • Maybe it doesn't work when it ends in w: jaw - jawed chew - chewed bow - bowed row - rowed flow - flowed
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5 Answers
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Maybe it doesn't work when it ends in w:

jaw - jawed
chew - chewed
bow - bowed
row - rowed
flow - flowed
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I have a theory that we may be talking phonetics here rather than ... i.e. the 'w' in chew doesn't sound like a consonant ??? but then I may be totally wrong ...
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I think you're right. The rule probably is about consonant + vowel + consonant sounds.
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I hope you found your answer by now but 'w' is an exception to the rule. They way I explain it is that the 'w' is already double.
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GuestIn the excercise to practice this is the word chew. I don't believe we spell it chewwed; but I was at a loss to explain to my puzzled students why not. Could you please explain this mystery?
The ew combination (as well as aw and ow) are vowel digraphs. That is, a vowel is expressed with two letters. So "w" counts as a vowel, not a consonant.

C
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