In English, a doubled consonant often indicates that the preceding vowel does not take a long sound. For example “hop” becomes “hopping” and “hopped”, while “hope” is “hoping” and “hoped”. Note that the second consonant itself is usually not pronounced.
Like so many English rules, this applies except for the times that it doesn’t! Even fluent native speakers of English are often uncertain if a word should be spelt with doubled consonants.
A simple idea for reforming English would be to eliminate the doubled consonants. Very few words would become homographs if this measure were applied. Such incidences may be addressed by the adoption of a more regular, phonetic spelling.
“Desert” and“dessert” become “disert” and “deesert”. “Hoped” and “hopped” become “hohped” and “hoped”, respectively, or possibly “hohpd” and “hopd”.