From a very interesting conversation between Aci and I on words.
It's good to have intelligent and knowledgeable people who can keep me straight on a few things ;)
To make it easier on everyone, I'm giving a combined explanation from both of us on the matter with Aci's permission.
First off, as someone who likes reading Medieval and Renassaince poetry, I honestly don't care how "color/colour" is spelled. It's the same word to me whether it's spelled "colour", "color", "colore", "culur" or any other permutation of the word. Personally, I've always been fond of the Old English version "colore". It just looks cool in my opinion.
In fact, thanks to Lysgeek, who minored in Linguistics if memory serves me right, we have a list of the different spellings with some explanation weaved in:
[Early ME. colur, later colour, color, a. OF. color, culur, colur, later colour, coulour (retained in AFr.), couleur (= Pr., Sp. color, It. colore):-L. color-em. Latin long o passed in OF. into a very close sound intermediate between o and u, both of which letters, and subsequently the digraph ou, were used to express it; in an accented syllable the sound at length changed to ö written eu, whence mod.F. couleur. The OE. word was híw, hue. Colour, corresponding to the late AFr., has been the normal spelling in Eng. from 14th c.; but color has been used occasionally, chiefly under L. influence, from 15th c., and is now the prevalent spelling in U.S.]
Aci's feelings on the matter is very similar to my own:
My view? I'm totally against any "simplification" or "rationalisation" of language. If someone wants to do that, then I would suggest that they take up Esperanto instead :-)
The reason is this : language is a mutable, changeable beast. It is precisely the nuances that present themselves in the form of irregular verbs etc that make it what it is - so to speak of differences in spelling, and whether one is superior to the other or not is equivalent to debating on whether Scottish or Irish dialects are superior. And that is plainly ridiculous.
I just spell words the way I want to; I could, I suppose, do a Joyce on people and be as incomprehensible as Finnegan's Wake.
You got to love the guy, I tell ya...
Anyway, back to the history of the word "color". The word in Latin is "color". It comes from the verb "colos" - meaning either to collect or arrange or color - through its noun form of "coloris" (according to some sources - most don't recognize the form and just use "color") meaning, well, a hue of color. (Courtesy of the Norte Dame Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid.) Just going off the cuff here, it was probably used mainly as a classification for sorting things, which when you think of it, it still is. It was spelt "color" for centuries before the Roman Catholic Church even came into being.
Long before England decided they needed to standardize spelling for the sake of clarity, most scholars used the Latin version in their writings - if they didn't write in Greek. The Founding Fathers of the US actually considered using Latin as the official language of the country for probably a variety of reasons, primarily setting up a distinction between themselves and the British in my opinion.
(Side note - I'm still trying to find the reference. It may had been just one founding father - or just a push to use the Latin spellings. So far, I've found that Jefferson and Mason wanted all grammar schools to teach Latin and Greek.)
The American colonies was populated refugees from religious and political persecution. Bearing in mind the point Bernard Shaw made in the story Pygmalion, (later to become the play "My Fair Lady"), that the British use language as a way to segregate people, it is very possible that the American colonists, having Catholics among them, saw the "-our" spelling as a sign of religious bigotry. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Americans would consider adopting the original Latin spelling of several of these words to promote their ideal of religious freedom. Of course, they could have been intellectual purists and just plain snooty.
Ultimately, we'll have to blame Noel Webster for formalizing the many Latin spellings in American English.
Aci brought up another point:
It is possible, therefore that, "color" correctly comes from the Latin, and should be considered in the class of words / phrases appropriated from other languages, like "verandah", "coolie", "zeitgeist" and "infra dig".
Now, how the "colour" version came into being. Bear in mind that I am mostly quoting Aci...
The Norman invasion of 1066 (and all that) brought French in, and it is not long after this date that the first instances of the word "colour" appear. (13th C definitely, but in all probability before that, because of the lack of documents from that time).
The "u" comes from Middle English. Quote :
"The Old English symbol $$ was dropped, its place being taken by a or e. The sound of the Old English y, in the dialects where it survived, was expressed by u; and that of the Old English long u was written ou, as in French."
Also the long o sound passed over as ou.
(I think I may be confused a little here, but I found Aci's source document. I'll see if I can figure it out from there. I really don't think the original OE symbol was "$$".)
Note that this is well before the first splits between churches (I had theorized it had something to do with France and England splitting away from Rome). It also neatly explains why "color" is pronounced "ler" rather than "lor". (Though, in typical fashion, it doesn't explain the spelling of "pallor", eg)
A lot of this has to do with diphthongs and how they mutate. From http://www.geocities.com/indoeurop/project/phonetics/ie3.html -
"The most progressive languages usually tend to turn diphthongs into the single vowels - for example, of the Italic group, the most archaic Oscan languages kept them, but Latin dropped. Diphthongs were quite unstable in any language, so sometimes we cannot even identify the general direction of language changes - diphthongs disappear and emerge once again (like in English). Several modern languages of the family even have triphthongs (three components included in one sound) - like in English sour - but obviously the Proto-language did not have such."
If you really want to give yourself a headache, check out the site for Restored English Spelling. Egads! Personally, I would sooner write in Latin.
To make it easier on everyone, I'm giving a combined explanation from both of us on the matter with Aci's permission.
First off, as someone who likes reading Medieval and Renassaince poetry, I honestly don't care how "color/colour" is spelled. It's the same word to me whether it's spelled "colour", "color", "colore", "culur" or any other permutation of the word. Personally, I've always been fond of the Old English version "colore". It just looks cool in my opinion.
In fact, thanks to Lysgeek, who minored in Linguistics if memory serves me right, we have a list of the different spellings with some explanation weaved in:
[Early ME. colur, later colour, color, a. OF. color, culur, colur, later colour, coulour (retained in AFr.), couleur (= Pr., Sp. color, It. colore):-L. color-em. Latin long o passed in OF. into a very close sound intermediate between o and u, both of which letters, and subsequently the digraph ou, were used to express it; in an accented syllable the sound at length changed to ö written eu, whence mod.F. couleur. The OE. word was híw, hue. Colour, corresponding to the late AFr., has been the normal spelling in Eng. from 14th c.; but color has been used occasionally, chiefly under L. influence, from 15th c., and is now the prevalent spelling in U.S.]
Aci's feelings on the matter is very similar to my own:
My view? I'm totally against any "simplification" or "rationalisation" of language. If someone wants to do that, then I would suggest that they take up Esperanto instead :-)
The reason is this : language is a mutable, changeable beast. It is precisely the nuances that present themselves in the form of irregular verbs etc that make it what it is - so to speak of differences in spelling, and whether one is superior to the other or not is equivalent to debating on whether Scottish or Irish dialects are superior. And that is plainly ridiculous.
I just spell words the way I want to; I could, I suppose, do a Joyce on people and be as incomprehensible as Finnegan's Wake.
You got to love the guy, I tell ya...
Anyway, back to the history of the word "color". The word in Latin is "color". It comes from the verb "colos" - meaning either to collect or arrange or color - through its noun form of "coloris" (according to some sources - most don't recognize the form and just use "color") meaning, well, a hue of color. (Courtesy of the Norte Dame Latin Dictionary and Grammar Aid.) Just going off the cuff here, it was probably used mainly as a classification for sorting things, which when you think of it, it still is. It was spelt "color" for centuries before the Roman Catholic Church even came into being.
Long before England decided they needed to standardize spelling for the sake of clarity, most scholars used the Latin version in their writings - if they didn't write in Greek. The Founding Fathers of the US actually considered using Latin as the official language of the country for probably a variety of reasons, primarily setting up a distinction between themselves and the British in my opinion.
(Side note - I'm still trying to find the reference. It may had been just one founding father - or just a push to use the Latin spellings. So far, I've found that Jefferson and Mason wanted all grammar schools to teach Latin and Greek.)
The American colonies was populated refugees from religious and political persecution. Bearing in mind the point Bernard Shaw made in the story Pygmalion, (later to become the play "My Fair Lady"), that the British use language as a way to segregate people, it is very possible that the American colonists, having Catholics among them, saw the "-our" spelling as a sign of religious bigotry. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Americans would consider adopting the original Latin spelling of several of these words to promote their ideal of religious freedom. Of course, they could have been intellectual purists and just plain snooty.
Ultimately, we'll have to blame Noel Webster for formalizing the many Latin spellings in American English.
Aci brought up another point:
It is possible, therefore that, "color" correctly comes from the Latin, and should be considered in the class of words / phrases appropriated from other languages, like "verandah", "coolie", "zeitgeist" and "infra dig".
Now, how the "colour" version came into being. Bear in mind that I am mostly quoting Aci...
The Norman invasion of 1066 (and all that) brought French in, and it is not long after this date that the first instances of the word "colour" appear. (13th C definitely, but in all probability before that, because of the lack of documents from that time).
The "u" comes from Middle English. Quote :
"The Old English symbol $$ was dropped, its place being taken by a or e. The sound of the Old English y, in the dialects where it survived, was expressed by u; and that of the Old English long u was written ou, as in French."
Also the long o sound passed over as ou.
(I think I may be confused a little here, but I found Aci's source document. I'll see if I can figure it out from there. I really don't think the original OE symbol was "$$".)
Note that this is well before the first splits between churches (I had theorized it had something to do with France and England splitting away from Rome). It also neatly explains why "color" is pronounced "ler" rather than "lor". (Though, in typical fashion, it doesn't explain the spelling of "pallor", eg)
A lot of this has to do with diphthongs and how they mutate. From http://www.geocities.com/indoeurop/project/phonetics/ie3.html -
"The most progressive languages usually tend to turn diphthongs into the single vowels - for example, of the Italic group, the most archaic Oscan languages kept them, but Latin dropped. Diphthongs were quite unstable in any language, so sometimes we cannot even identify the general direction of language changes - diphthongs disappear and emerge once again (like in English). Several modern languages of the family even have triphthongs (three components included in one sound) - like in English sour - but obviously the Proto-language did not have such."
If you really want to give yourself a headache, check out the site for Restored English Spelling. Egads! Personally, I would sooner write in Latin.