Learn English – Pronunciation difference between “collar” and “color”

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this word comes to us from the Latin word color-em, which was inherited by old French. The o segment in Old French was actually somewhere between [o] and [u] and was represented by the digraph ou. When this syllable became accented, it became fronted, represented by eu (this the Modern French couleur). The corresponding English word of old is the ancestor of hue.

The world was adopted directly into Middle English as colur; later colour from the Old French color, culur, colur; later colour; and finally coulour, which was the preferred Anglo-French spelling. Colour was eventually standardized in post Anglo-French English. Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary is credited with standardizing the latinate color in American English.

I'm sitting here saying the two words to myself and marveling that I never noticed that similarity in pronunciation before. :)

The difference is all in the "or."

In worship, the "or" is pronounced more as "ur" by most Americans. We say it as "wurship."

Warship is pronounced more the way it looks: "wawrship," with the mouth opening a bit wider on the "a."

Accent is on the first syllable in both words.