Obliged to point out that "color" is how it's spelled in Latin, Old French, and therefore post-Norman English, that the superfluous "u" was added later by the English aristocracy because they were jealous of how fancy the newly-respelled French looked.
Obliged to point out that Latin -or words were often spelled with -or, -our, and -ur in Old French also. If you are using Wiktionary as a source you have to click through to the Old French definitions to see the alternate forms, as well as parsing the descendant table to see the derived forms that the simple etymology blurb often leaves out. Doing so you can also see that Middle Dutch has 'coleur' (modern kleur) which very likely did not originate from Middle French given the timeframe.
The earliest quotations for colour in the Oxford English Dictionary are from around 1300 where it was spelled 'colur' (cf Welsh) which while being post-Norman England is not post-Norman English. For Norman/Angevin-England the OED also has a quotation for honour as 'onur' listed as before 1200 (and again as 'onour' from around 1300). If you want to make a case of superfluous 'u's being added a better example would be something like chancellor, where the 'u' was added in Middle English and then later removed, rather than colour (or honour) where the 'u's have existed since the earliest quotations. The reason color and honor stuck about in English is most likely because that is how they were spelled in Latin.
Obliged to point out that spelling is always an entirely cultural artefact, and that before colour was spelt color, it was spelt colos. There's nothing more correct about older forms, or newer forms, or any other forms. What matters is what is going to be clearest to your speech community and audience.
The transition in spelling from "colos" to "color" did not have anything with culture, but it has correctly reflected a change in the pronunciation of the word.
English is one of few languages where the relationship between the writing and the pronunciation of the vowels is mostly unpredictable, so knowing whether a word is spelled with "o" or with "ou" does not help you to know how to pronounce it.
So for the case of English, you are right that spelling is a cultural artefact, but not for the case of most languages, including Latin.
The oscillations in the spelling of Old French were caused by the fact that French had acquired some vowels that did not exist in Latin, e.g. front rounded vowels, so the French speakers did not know what Latin letters should be used to write them, and there existed no standardizing institution to choose some official spelling.
Another fun fact... almost all "American spelling" came from Britain, i.e. variants that died out in Old Blighty in the 1800s. Accent as well. For the most part, they were the ones that changed!
There's more—the -ize spelling comes directly from the old Greek spelling. -ise and -re were forced-on/taken from French. The British like to taunt the French, but apparently have forgotten about the spelling thing, and criticize Americans (unknowingly) for not doing the same.
In short, don't take any crap from Brits on the subject, haha. Most of my chats with them happened during my backpacking days, before Wikipedia and so I was not able to explain at the time. I believed it too with no other information.
It’s a common misconception that American accents have changed less than British accents. Both accents have changed. There’s a pretty obvious example that American accents have changed in the fact that many American accents have vowel mergers that result in pronunciation mergers of syllables with different spellings that aren’t merged in non-American accents. Wikipedia gives the example odd-facade-thawed, which all rhyme in most American accents but which have completely different sounds in non-American accents.
Likewise some American accents have lost the distinction between the vowels in marry-Mary-merry, or merge the vowels in pin-pen.
If American accents had changed less then why would they continue to use spellings that no longer match pronunciation in their own accents but which do match in many non-American accents?
The reality is that both accent groups have diverged.
The idea that American spelling and pronunciation have a better heritage than British English is a compelling one, especially as the idea that Southern and Appalachian accents are closer to those of the Founding Fathers and Shakespearean English is a nice balance to the perception that these accents sound unintelligent and uneducated, but it's simply not true that one dialect has diverged more than another - both have diverged and in many cases substantially.
One of the common reasons given is that British accents like RP (there's a lot to criticise about RP but that's another topic), Cockney (featured elsewhere on the thread and the internet in general, oi m8 you got a loicence for that?), and general loss of rhoticity in BrE (and some AmE) accents that are most represented in American media have diverged substantially, but to me the examples of Shakespearean English in classic pronunciation sound closer to the West Country accents than they do any American accent. Note that there could be some bias here as the speakers are British, but you get features like H-dropping which simply don't exist in AmE. It also wouldn't be fair to say any modern accent sounds even remotely close to this.
Another weird one is spelling, given that etymology and spelling is pretty interesting in general, at least up until the advent of the printing press. Both BrE and AmE have made some questionable decisions here. BrE standardised earlier and kept some Frenchisms like -ise (the OED maintains that -ize is correct with -ise being valid) but this was likely because -ise is correct for some words like advertise, or prise (which AmE dropped entirely for pry, and weirdly took up burglarize) and universal -ise makes spelling easier. In some cases it's just because words/pronunciations came much later from French in BrE whereas they came from Spanish and Italian in AmE. American spelling on the other hand was intentionally simplified, and although the spelling reform Webster wanted never truly happened (if it did you'd be speaking the American languaj) it did lead to the dropping of -our for -or, -re for -er, -oe for -e, etc.
I'm biased but I do prefer the etymological spelling, even if it means that we do say lieutenant differently.
It's additionally funny that in French, "ou" reads as [u], that is, approximately like the wovel in "fool" (cf "jour", "amour", "troubadour", etc). I wonder if it was actually pronounced like "coloor" at any time in the past.
However I think that when Americans brought it back they missed opportunity to get rid of 'c' and put 'k' there instead. Is 'c' even used in English language? It usually is just 'k' or 's'.
Usually, but not always. Here you go—'cinch'. Could replace the first 'c' with s, but the second instance would be a little more difficult, as 'sh' has a softer pronunciation than 'ch' here, which itself is not as hard as 'j' (emoji) or 'ge' (rage).
In Old English, ‘c’ was always hard and the soft sound used ‘s’. ‘K’ was not used or at least not common. We got the mixed up ‘c’ sounds with the Norman French influence.
Except now there's also the "Referrer-Policy" header, which is spelled correctly. I wonder if the spec committee debated calling it Referer-Policy for consistency.
Filthy non-OED user. The author is probably a Cambridge dictionary person!
Seriously, -ize endings in the Cambridge spelling tradition relies on you knowing the etymology of the word, and if it’s from the Ancient Greek, that’s the one you use. Otherwise -ise for French or Latin words.
I like and endorse Webster's reforms (-or, -er, -ize). Why write the French way? What have the Normans ever done for us? Apart from the legal system, chivalry, heraldry, and centuries of low-key class warfare.
Reading the comments makes me realise that a library for fixing the ability (or non-ability, I should say) to recognise (British) humour should be next on the list.
The man who got really pissed off by complete disconnection between spelling and pronunciation of words in English was George Bernard Shaw. Throughout his life he was an avid critic of the latin alphabet that was (and still is) used to represent spoken words.
He was so frustrated that shortly before his death in 1950 Shaw put the creation of a new alphabet in his will backed by grant in aid. And thus the Shavian alphabet was born. Enjoy:
Not enjoyable to me. It elevates the pronunciation that Shaw used into the status of the one true English and marginalises any other spoken variants, dialects all over the globe. This is presumptuous and unfair.
How about this (equally unworkable) idea to achieve the goal of fixing the disconnect: instead of reforming the spelling, reform the pronunciation. Keep the writing as it is, but pronounce it to the rules (mostly: the letter/multigraph to phoneme map) which you find naturally in the majority of the other languages that use the Latin script. One can argue over the precise details and exceptions.
The good: it makes English much more regular and amenable to learners, all English speakers more or less affected in the same way
The bad: the change is drastic so that movies from the time before reform need subtitles, pronunciation will start drifting apart soon and undo the reform efforts quickly
Readit News
The earliest quotations for colour in the Oxford English Dictionary are from around 1300 where it was spelled 'colur' (cf Welsh) which while being post-Norman England is not post-Norman English. For Norman/Angevin-England the OED also has a quotation for honour as 'onur' listed as before 1200 (and again as 'onour' from around 1300). If you want to make a case of superfluous 'u's being added a better example would be something like chancellor, where the 'u' was added in Middle English and then later removed, rather than colour (or honour) where the 'u's have existed since the earliest quotations. The reason color and honor stuck about in English is most likely because that is how they were spelled in Latin.
English is one of few languages where the relationship between the writing and the pronunciation of the vowels is mostly unpredictable, so knowing whether a word is spelled with "o" or with "ou" does not help you to know how to pronounce it.
So for the case of English, you are right that spelling is a cultural artefact, but not for the case of most languages, including Latin.
The oscillations in the spelling of Old French were caused by the fact that French had acquired some vowels that did not exist in Latin, e.g. front rounded vowels, so the French speakers did not know what Latin letters should be used to write them, and there existed no standardizing institution to choose some official spelling.
There's more—the -ize spelling comes directly from the old Greek spelling. -ise and -re were forced-on/taken from French. The British like to taunt the French, but apparently have forgotten about the spelling thing, and criticize Americans (unknowingly) for not doing the same.
In short, don't take any crap from Brits on the subject, haha. Most of my chats with them happened during my backpacking days, before Wikipedia and so I was not able to explain at the time. I believed it too with no other information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_s...
Likewise some American accents have lost the distinction between the vowels in marry-Mary-merry, or merge the vowels in pin-pen.
If American accents had changed less then why would they continue to use spellings that no longer match pronunciation in their own accents but which do match in many non-American accents?
The reality is that both accent groups have diverged.
One of the common reasons given is that British accents like RP (there's a lot to criticise about RP but that's another topic), Cockney (featured elsewhere on the thread and the internet in general, oi m8 you got a loicence for that?), and general loss of rhoticity in BrE (and some AmE) accents that are most represented in American media have diverged substantially, but to me the examples of Shakespearean English in classic pronunciation sound closer to the West Country accents than they do any American accent. Note that there could be some bias here as the speakers are British, but you get features like H-dropping which simply don't exist in AmE. It also wouldn't be fair to say any modern accent sounds even remotely close to this.
Shakespearean English:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYiYd9RcK5M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s
Some good reddit threads on the matter:
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9ju72b/is_th...
https://old.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/j3imwe/is_it_t...
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/9oke84/is_...
Another weird one is spelling, given that etymology and spelling is pretty interesting in general, at least up until the advent of the printing press. Both BrE and AmE have made some questionable decisions here. BrE standardised earlier and kept some Frenchisms like -ise (the OED maintains that -ize is correct with -ise being valid) but this was likely because -ise is correct for some words like advertise, or prise (which AmE dropped entirely for pry, and weirdly took up burglarize) and universal -ise makes spelling easier. In some cases it's just because words/pronunciations came much later from French in BrE whereas they came from Spanish and Italian in AmE. American spelling on the other hand was intentionally simplified, and although the spelling reform Webster wanted never truly happened (if it did you'd be speaking the American languaj) it did lead to the dropping of -our for -or, -re for -er, -oe for -e, etc.
I'm biased but I do prefer the etymological spelling, even if it means that we do say lieutenant differently.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/colour#Middle_English
The second vowel, /uː/, is like in "true". (Note also the range of alternate spellings: colur, color, culur, coler, coloure, kolour.)
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Re...
Seriously, -ize endings in the Cambridge spelling tradition relies on you knowing the etymology of the word, and if it’s from the Ancient Greek, that’s the one you use. Otherwise -ise for French or Latin words.
American is basically English with typos, bad grammar, and bad style.
And the abolition of slavery in England - not of great benefit to the rest of the world I suppose.
Some of the evolution of parliamentary democracy?
Low key class warfare is better than the high key version - look at the French revolution and the like!
In that sense, english is basically bastardized old norse.
He was so frustrated that shortly before his death in 1950 Shaw put the creation of a new alphabet in his will backed by grant in aid. And thus the Shavian alphabet was born. Enjoy:
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet
- https://youtu.be/D66LrlotvCA
How about this (equally unworkable) idea to achieve the goal of fixing the disconnect: instead of reforming the spelling, reform the pronunciation. Keep the writing as it is, but pronounce it to the rules (mostly: the letter/multigraph to phoneme map) which you find naturally in the majority of the other languages that use the Latin script. One can argue over the precise details and exceptions.
The good: it makes English much more regular and amenable to learners, all English speakers more or less affected in the same way The bad: the change is drastic so that movies from the time before reform need subtitles, pronunciation will start drifting apart soon and undo the reform efforts quickly
The last thing I need a tool to do is to spread divisiveness.