Why do you have to add an extra letter before adding -ed for the past tense for certain words? Stop, becomes stopped

Question

Why do you have to add an extra letter before adding -ed for the past tense for certain words? Stop, becomes stopped

In: 6

Answer 1

Historically, the -e- in “-ed” used to be pronounced. Stopped used to be pronounced as something like “stop-ped” with two syllables. English just hasn’t significantly updated its spelling system since about the late 15th century or so.