Re: Need to know a linguistic term

Ian Maxwell wrote:
>
> Hi, I was just wondering if there is a proper linguistic term that just
> means "two of the same letter in a row".
Do you mean letter or sound?  I don't know of any term for two of the
same *letter* in a row, but the same sound twice in a row is called, for
consonants "gemination" (ex: the differences between the /k/ in
"booking" and in "bookcase", where, for many speakers, the /k/ is held
for about twice as long as normal, or better examples are in languages
like Japanese that have things like _mate_ "wait!" vs. _matte_
"waiting").  For vowels, it's simply called "long vowel".  English "long
vowels" aren't true long vowels.  They're called that because that
*used* to be what they were.  Short i and long i were at one time the
exact same sound, just with long i pronounced longer than short i.
Japanese has that also.

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