Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 09/02/2006 11:22, Rochelle Altman wrote:
> ...
> No, Peter is right in his examples; "colour" and "color" do not indicate a 
> sound change. What you are looking at is the ideas of a school of 
> 19th-century grammarians who wanted to standardize spelling and decided 
> that loans from French should be spelled as in French to show their 
> etymological origins. They added "u" and doubled "m" and added an 'e', for 
> instance. Hence, "programme" for "program," "honour" for "honor," and so 
> on. There was no change in pronunciation.
>   

This may be correct for "program(me)", but not for "colo(u)r" and 
"hono(u)r". Both of these words are spelled with -our in KJV. Early 
editions of Shakespeare used both "honour" and "honor", "colour" and 
"color" (see http://ise.uvic.ca/Foyer/search.html, the site which 
Yitzhak pointed me to which has original and modernised (American) 
spelling versions). According to 
http://www.spellingsociety.org/aboutsss/johnson1.php (last item, in odd 
spelling!) Johnson, writing in 1755, preferred "honour". See also the 
following from 
http://www.wordsources.info/words-mod-dictionariesPt2.html, concerning 
Webster:
> He dropped the silent “u” in the English spelling of *honour* and 
> *favour* and wrote *honor* and *favor*,

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/