Comment by nine_k
2 days ago
It's additionally funny that in French, "ou" reads as [u], that is, approximately like the wovel in "fool" (cf "jour", "amour", "troubadour", etc). I wonder if it was actually pronounced like "coloor" at any time in the past.
Yes! Wiktionary gives one such Middle English pronunciation here:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/colour#Middle_English
The second vowel, /uː/, is like in "true". (Note also the range of alternate spellings: colur, color, culur, coler, coloure, kolour.)