So lets look at the etymology of the infamous "colour."
So we can see that the word began as "color" and then via French gained the "u." Now the pronunciation changed to drop the "u" but the 'u' remained. No one chose any of this it is the natural evolution of a language.
Then in the US the dictionary writer Noah Webster decided to clean things up and remove the 'u' thus erasing the French history and coupling the word back onto the Latin.
I asked ChatGPT whether this is "natural"
do languages naturally ever go backwards to reuse old spellings and pronunciations?
ChatGPT said:
Languages don’t naturally go backwards to reuse old spellings or pronunciations in a broad, organic sense, but they can experience deliberate or stylistic reversions, revivals, or preservations driven by social, cultural, or political forces. Here’s how it happens:
📚 1. Revival and Restoration Movements
- Hebrew: A famous example is Modern Hebrew, revived as a spoken language in the late 19th and early 20th centuries after being primarily a liturgical language for centuries.
- Irish Gaelic: Efforts have been made to revive older Irish vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar in modern usage.
🏛️ 2. Deliberate Archaisms
- Writers, poets, or politicians sometimes reintroduce old-fashioned words, spellings, or pronunciations for aesthetic or rhetorical effect.
- Example: The word "ye" instead of "you" in modern branding (e.g., "Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe").
🎭 3. Prestige and Identity
- Some regions or social groups may deliberately adopt older spellings or pronunciations to signal cultural heritage.
- Example: In England, the older pronunciation of "herb" with an h-sound remains, while Americans dropped it.
📖 4. Spelling Reform Reversals
- Sometimes, spelling reforms don’t catch on, and people revert to older conventions.
- Example: In the UK, some reformed spellings from the early 20th century (e.g., "publick" → "public") didn’t stick, while others did.
🧬 5. Language Conservation in Isolation
- Isolated communities sometimes preserve older forms of a language while the mainstream version evolves.
- Example: Icelandic has retained much of Old Norse grammar and vocabulary compared to other Scandinavian languages.
🎤 6. Pronunciation Shifts in Reverse (Rare)
- Pronunciation rarely reverses naturally, but certain older pronunciations might survive in specific dialects and later gain prestige.
- Example: The rhotic pronunciation (pronouncing the 'r' in words like "car") remains in American English and has seen renewed attention in some British accents.
In short, while natural linguistic evolution almost always moves forward, social, cultural, or political forces can deliberately reintroduce older elements for identity, aesthetics, or prestige.
So broadly we can see here the interest in restoring lost languages here, but it is never a natural process to revert to an archaic form.
From this we can see a fundamental difference between the creative living parent form of English as currently spoken in England and the artificial off shoot in America. English is a dynamic language forming naturally as it passes through history. American is quite different as a deliberate artificial construct of actually just a handful of lexicographers who decided to create a language largely in opposition to the language of the British Empire. The American language is more like the private language some kids or criminals might create to separate themselves from their parents or wider society. It does not thereby count as a real living language. That is the proposition to investigate here.
It is true there are some innovations in American, but I note these are conceptual and strangely rarely linguistic. One of the more interesting is the US prominence of the very ancient word "cool." While it came to mean "calm" during the Saxon period in English history, this became a very important side to the meaning in America. The American thinker Robert Pirsig speculated in his book Lila that this later importance of the word came from incorporation into US culture of the American Indian character of being unexcitable and of few words. This Pirsig argues is the origin of the portrayal of steely cowboys of few words in Westerns. So while a specific American meaning came into the language the language did not change. Do the indigenous people have a word for this character this would be a wonderful addition to the US language.
It might say something about the American attitude to Indians that indigenous words have only superficially entered the US language. You might think important concepts like "cool" might have come with new words. But a list of imported words into the American language seem to be only superficial nouns for new things like the racoon. Nothing conceptual or cultural seems to have been absorbed.
By contrast the actual English language richly absorbs words as seen by the huge number speculated to be as large as a million and making it by far the richest language. This very much owing to its complex history but also openness and interest of the English to new things. As discussed recently in the blog the English ability and interest in preserving pronunciation like with imported foreign words illustrates this openness to new things and respect for other ways of doing things. You have for instance the US English failure to pronounce 'Paraguay' while in England an ocean away a very good attempt is made to say this country.
American is a completely different language, not free flowing, closed and artificially constructed cutting off its history. Do the Americans need to wait for another Noah Webster before their language can change? or are they open to the free flow and changing nature of language? The real English language in England has never been tampered with and while attempts have been made to fix it and create definitive versions of it like Dr Johnson's dictionary, these have not sort to change it but only record it.
This means to me that the root stock of the English language remains in England, and unfortunately US attempts to cultivate and alter the language artificially have killed off that heritage and removed it from the root. It may seem absurd to an American to have a silent 'u' in colour, but that's the thing no real English speaker would ever really notice or care they just inherit and run with the language and that is what makes it and us English and makes it open to change, evolution and life.
Since the Americans want their own language and do want to cut it from the root stock in England it makes more sense to call it a new language like American. Then they are free to change it all they want and enact this artificial desire to have their own language.
You can see a similar difference of attitude in religion. In the UK there has been a continual inflow of ideas most famously the conflict between Roman Catholic and German Protestant. Both imported and resolved through the Tudors into the Church of England. The Church of England while true to the Bible and increasingly scholarship does contain elements of ancient English ideas and culture that has been melded into the religion. One of the most obvious is the idea of Three Kings visiting Jesus. This is ancient English culture being absorbed into the Nativity. Like the English language it is a rich melting pot.
By contrast in America you have deliberate attempts at the wholesale creation of new religions like Mormonism and Scientology. Like the American language this is a totally different attitude. An egotistical attempt to absorb ideas and then reformulate them without credit into new American products. As with everything American this is a rejection and cutting off of the Past and the presenting as new, things that are mostly inherited, and yet trying to still give them validity by claiming they are the true versions of the Past. Mormonism is a great example. Exactly like American English claiming to be a version of English, Mormonism claims to be about Jesus. And in the same way that American English is not English neither is Mormonism anything to do with Jesus.
As a lesson here America cannot have it both ways. If you wish to adopt the Past you are humble to the Past. Let the Past be your teacher and allow things to change naturally. The moment you take the Past, rewrite it however you want and then try to graft that back on to the Past you break the continuity and end up in an artificial place that I suggest is also dead. I mean if Noah Webster can just decide to take the 'u' out of colour then what is to stop anyone just making changes. Why for instance do we not just spell the country Amerika? In fact that will be my spelling of United States of Amerika from now on just to illustrate how artificial changes do not constitute a normal understanding, use or evolution of a living language.
