[radicalbyte]

> word like "color" has two "o" letters but neither of them makes an "ou" sound

That it why we spell it as "colour" in English. Americans removed the "u" from their dialect which makes a needlessly complicated language even more so.

Learning Dutch really opened my eyes as to how terrible English is as a written language. The funny thing is that it's mirrored in our law - English law is all about case law and president. We don't even have a formal written constitution.

[Amezarak]

This is completely incorrect. "Color" was spelled "color" in England throughout its history. "Colour" was a later variant that came along later and existed alongside "color" for many years. America eventually standardized on the "color" variant and the UK standardized on the "colour" variant. If you have any doubts about this, you can search on books.google.com for +"color" and look through books published in the UK to see that this is the case. For example, here is a book published in 1756 printed in London by an Irishman in which he consistently uses "color":

https://www.google.com/books/edition/An_Essay_on_Waters/UWtb...

You can find many other things of interest in here, like the use of the medial s, which only died out in the mid 1800s and makes reading old texts very annoying.

It's important to remember that for centuries in English, there was no such thing as standardized spelling. You spelled it how you felt it should be spelled. This extended even to people's own names. This didn't really change until the late 1700s-1800s.

Etymologically, the word comes from the Latin "color" via the Old French "color."

[goodbyesf]

> That it why we spell it as "colour" in English.

No. That was due to french influence. Not to be more phonetic.

> Americans removed the "u" from their dialect which makes a needlessly complicated language even more so.

Webster removed it to make it more phonetic. Do you pronounce color the same way as flour? Of course not. Color, harbor, favor, etc is more phonetically accurate than colour, harbour, favour, etc.

> The funny thing is that it's mirrored in our law - English law is all about case law and president.

Precedent.

[jdhzzz]

It's explained in this SNL sketch "Washington's dream": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk&t=1s

[radicalbyte]

Amazing sketch

[loevborg]

What? No, it's spelled "colour" because it comes from French, not to help make pronunciation easier.