...
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.
He dropped the silent āuā in the English spelling of *honour* and *favour* and wrote *honor* and *favor*,
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.