4 ms·

Accordingly to this article: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/color-colour/ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/color-colour/ It seems the French spelling was "colou

Accordingly to this article: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/color-colour/ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/color-colour/ It seems the French spelling was "colour" at one point.

littlestymaar 5y ago
TIL, thanks
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  And myself in the process of answering you :)
8ytecoder 5y ago
The way I remember it, Webster standardised a lot of the spellings to be close to how it’s pronounced. The u in colour is never pronounced,…etc.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  I wouldn't bet on that. The u in colour is never pronounced, but neither is the o.[1] The spelling color is much more likely to be motivated by that being the Latin spelling of the word. [1] I watched Star Trek: The Original Series recently and the cast's pronunciation of "sensors" with the FORCE vowel in the second syllable is really jarring. Do we know if that was an affectation or a natural pronunciation?
  - phonebanshee 5y ago
    I think you're hearing a typical Vulcan accent...
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      Spock says it a lot, which is very conspicuous, but the rest of the cast pronounce it the same way.
  - dfawcus 5y ago
    I was always amused when someone ordered the launch of some some form of buoy. "launch a boo-eey" (Brit's distinguish between "boy" and "buoy" - the latter has the same sound as in "buoyancy")
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > (Brit's distinguish between "boy" and "buoy" - the latter has the same sound as in "buoyancy") That didn't clarify much. I would pronounce "buoyancy" as if it began with "boy".
      - dfawcus 5y ago
        The 'o' in boy is 'oh', that in buoy is 'oy'; the distinction is subtle, but can be heard, plus the latter is slightly longer. Edited: - Maybe this will help: http://www.employees.org/~dfawcus/Good-Boy_Life-Buoy.m4a http://www.employees.org/~dfawcus/Good-Boy_Life-Buoy.m4a
        dfawcus 5y ago
        So I should probably have written 'some Brits'... Anyway, if someone can't hear the difference in that sample, load it in to an audio editor, and see that (in a time / amplitude graph) the two words have different shapes. I've not got a tool for graphing the frequency content to hand, so can't easily see how those would be distinguished.
      - Symbiote 5y ago
        (Am British.) I don't understand either. As far as I'm concerned, boy and buoy are homophones, and the first syllable of buoyancy is too. Wiktionary agrees: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/buoy#Pronunciation https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/buoy#Pronunciation
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - 5y ago
  - mattkrause 5y ago
    One story is that it's an (over)correction of Leonard Nimoy's native Boston accent, which would otherwise obliterate the /r/. Southie Spock would have been amazing though.
  - saltcured 5y ago
    Maybe they didn't want to awaken the censors...

Accordingly to this article: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/color-colour/ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/color-colour/ It seems the French spelling was "colour" at one point.

littlestymaar 5y ago

TIL, thanks

hungryforcodes 5y ago
And myself in the process of answering you :)

8ytecoder 5y ago

The way I remember it, Webster standardised a lot of the spellings to be close to how it’s pronounced. The u in colour is never pronounced,…etc.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
I wouldn't bet on that. The u in colour is never pronounced, but neither is the o.[1] The spelling color is much more likely to be motivated by that being the Latin spelling of the word. [1] I watched Star Trek: The Original Series recently and the cast's pronunciation of "sensors" with the FORCE vowel in the second syllable is really jarring. Do we know if that was an affectation or a natural pronunciation?
- phonebanshee 5y ago
  I think you're hearing a typical Vulcan accent...
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    Spock says it a lot, which is very conspicuous, but the rest of the cast pronounce it the same way.
- dfawcus 5y ago
  I was always amused when someone ordered the launch of some some form of buoy. "launch a boo-eey" (Brit's distinguish between "boy" and "buoy" - the latter has the same sound as in "buoyancy")
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > (Brit's distinguish between "boy" and "buoy" - the latter has the same sound as in "buoyancy") That didn't clarify much. I would pronounce "buoyancy" as if it began with "boy".
    - dfawcus 5y ago
      The 'o' in boy is 'oh', that in buoy is 'oy'; the distinction is subtle, but can be heard, plus the latter is slightly longer. Edited: - Maybe this will help: http://www.employees.org/~dfawcus/Good-Boy_Life-Buoy.m4a http://www.employees.org/~dfawcus/Good-Boy_Life-Buoy.m4a
      - dfawcus 5y ago
        So I should probably have written 'some Brits'... Anyway, if someone can't hear the difference in that sample, load it in to an audio editor, and see that (in a time / amplitude graph) the two words have different shapes. I've not got a tool for graphing the frequency content to hand, so can't easily see how those would be distinguished.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      (Am British.) I don't understand either. As far as I'm concerned, boy and buoy are homophones, and the first syllable of buoyancy is too. Wiktionary agrees: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/buoy#Pronunciation https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/buoy#Pronunciation
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - 5y ago
- mattkrause 5y ago
  One story is that it's an (over)correction of Leonard Nimoy's native Boston accent, which would otherwise obliterate the /r/. Southie Spock would have been amazing though.
- saltcured 5y ago
  Maybe they didn't want to awaken the censors...