W vs. WH - a Linguistic Pet Peeve

G   Fri Oct 07, 2005 3:42 am GMT
http://www.geocities.com/bprice1949/wvswh.html

Quote-''When I was a young man in the Air Force I heard a guy talking with a friend about Wales. This caught my attention, since I had an interest in Wales and the Welsh language. But when I tried to join in his conversation all I got from him was a puzzled look. We went back and forth for a while until I finally realized that he hadn't been talking about Wales at all. He had been talking about whales!

But I had distinctly heard him say Wales. So I attempted to clarify.

"You mean whales," I said.

"Yes, Wales."

"Wales? But that's the country Wales, not whales. You're talking about whales."

"Yes, like I said, Wales."

Now I was really confused. He meant "whales" but was saying "Wales." We went around in circles like this for a couple minutes until it suddenly dawned on me. He did mean "whales", but pronounced it with a W instead of a WH. For him, "Wales" and "whales" were pronounced exactly alike!

This was quite a revelation to me, and from that moment I began paying attention to how other people pronounced "WH".

My roommate was from Pennsylvania, and he, too, pronounced W and WH exactly the same. Things "overwelmed" him, and when he was tired he was "wipped." When people complained, they were "wining".

I then thought back to a joke that I had once heard when I was very young. It was based on a pun, using the words "which" and "witch." I remember thinking to myself that it was a pretty lousy pun, since the words only rhymed but were not identical. Now I realized that for many people it was really was a pun. "Which" and "witch" were for them true homonyms.

For me they are not homonyms. WH is pronounced as if it were spelled "HW", whereas W is simply a W. In other words, WH is aspirated, and W is not. "Which" and "witch" are as different to me as the words "hill" and "ill".

The more people I asked about this curious little detail, the more I realized that I was in a minority. It was quite a challenge to find anyone else who made the distinction between WH and W. In my frustration I talked with a former college roommate from Iowa and asked him the same question. Is there a difference between WH and W? "Of course," he replied. "When we were in grade school our teacher told us to hold our hands in front of our mouths when we pronounced the WH. With the WH we should feel a little puff of air." I then tried it myself. His teacher was right.

About ten years later I was an ESL teacher in California. One of my colleagues prepared a lesson in which he taught the difference between WH and W to his students. "W is voiced," he explained, "but WH is unvoiced." When I read his explanation I disagreed with him, saying that the difference was in aspiration, not voice. "Nonsense," he scoffed. "For WHERE you don't say 'Huh-wear'."

Well, neither do I. And I don't say "huh-ill" for "hill".

Some people I have interviewed concede the difference between WH and W, but admit that in ordinary speech they don't bother to make the distinction. By not making the distinction they are participating in an evolutionary process of language that eliminates minimal pairs. Minimal pairs are word pairs used to determine the lowest level of phoneme that can distinguish one word from another. "Ship/sheep" is a minimal pair, for example, demonstrating that the vowel difference in these two words is significant in English. In other languages, such as Spanish, this particular vowel difference is not significant; hence the stereotyped Spanish accent of pronouncing "ee" for short "i".

English spelling is ample proof of the fact that WH was originally meant to be distinguished from W. "Whales" and "Wales" are spelled differently; so are "whether/weather", "whither/wither", "whine/wine", "where/wear", "when/wen", "whee/we", and "whiz/wiz." (The last one is particularly amusing. I am sure there are people out there who actually think that "whiz" is an abbreviation of "wizard.") These words are spelled differently because they are meant to be pronounced differently. But with the passage of time languages tend to simplify themselves, grammatically and phonetically. English has lost the bulk of its original verb conjugations, and the orthography is cluttered with silent letters.

Now our generation is witnessing another simplification - the slow death of WH and all of its minimal pairs. With the loss of minimal pairs, the number of homonyms in the language increases. When homonyms increase, the language becomes ambiguous. Ambiguity is not a good thing. If you want a good example of a language where homonyms are out of control and ambiguity reigns supreme, take a look at Chinese.

Most people I have met in the last thirty years make no distinction whatsoever (or should I say watsoever?) between the WH and the W. Most speakers in the media blend their WH and W as well, relentlessly propagating their dialect from coast to coast. It appears to be an irresistible trend which (or witch) is pushing my brand of American English into a linguistic museum. My daughter, thank God, learned her pronunciation from me, and she will vicariously carry my WH/W minimal pairs well into the 21st century, long after I am dead and buried.

But in the meantime I am still around, proudly pronouncing all those minimal pairs just as they are spelled.

This little difference of dialect has for me developed into a pet peeve. I wince every time I hear a good healthy WH being lopped in half, reduced to an anemic W. The President lives in the White House, not the Wight House for crying out loud! And those things that turn around on your car are wheels, not weals! And you don't wet your appetite, you whet it! Who ever heard of a wet appetite?

Whenever I hear that slogan, "Save the whales," I feel like answering, "And save how they are pronounced, too!"''

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What do you think about this linguist's pet peeve?
G   Fri Oct 07, 2005 3:48 am GMT
<<What do you think about this linguist's pet peeve?>>

typo:

What do you think about this linguistic pet peeve?
G   Fri Oct 07, 2005 3:49 am GMT
that someone has.
Uriel   Fri Oct 07, 2005 4:17 am GMT
I never pronounce the H in WH words, and it sounds weird to me when (sorry, wen) other people do. Weird, affected, and slightly annoying. So I guess I have the opposite pet peeve to yours.

I don't think you can safely use English spelling to prove much of anything, except that its inventors were evil and sadistic. Just kidding -- I'm sure in the past, and in some dialects today, there was a distinction between WH and plain old W, but so what? Once upon a time people apparently pronounced the K in knife and knot. No one does anymore.
Kirk   Fri Oct 07, 2005 4:19 am GMT
This exact message has been posted before. I smell trollery, as it's popped up here before. Sounds a lot like SpaceFlight's posts. Anyway, even if it isn't , that person can just get over it.
Lazar   Fri Oct 07, 2005 4:23 am GMT
<<I smell trollery, as it's popped up here before. Sounds a lot like SpaceFlight's posts.>>

Am I the only one who has a sneaking suspicion that a *lot* of the new posters who have popped up recently are actually SpaceFlight?
Uriel   Fri Oct 07, 2005 4:24 am GMT
If it's an attempt at trollery (is that a new word?), it's not a very good one. The great showdown between WH and W is hardly a provocative topic!
Mxsmanic   Fri Oct 07, 2005 5:12 am GMT
W and WH are pronounced the same in standard English. It's misleading to give students the impression that they are pronounced differently. And among the small minority of people who make a distinction between the two, the distinction is one of voice, not aspiration.
Kirk   Fri Oct 07, 2005 8:40 am GMT
<<Am I the only one who has a sneaking suspicion that a *lot* of the new posters who have popped up recently are actually SpaceFlight?>>

You're not the only one. SpaceFlight, cut it out. We've seen your shenanigans before and they get old.

<<And among the small minority of people who make a distinction between the two, the distinction is one of voice, not aspiration.>>

That's true. /W/ is voiceless, while /w/ is voiced.
Geoff_One   Fri Oct 07, 2005 11:19 am GMT
<< Kirk, You're not the only one. SpaceFlight, cut it out. We've seen your shenanigans before and they get old. >>

<< Uriel, The great showdown between WH and W is hardly a provocative topic! >>

Kirk,
IF it is him, these shenanigans, as you call them, may keep him
of the street and that may be a good thing.
Geoff_One   Fri Oct 07, 2005 11:21 am GMT
Typo alert:

of the streets
Kenna D   Fri Oct 07, 2005 11:41 am GMT
Many Americans still pronounce WH as [hw], and this is still a norm in Scottish English.

Some songs in which you can find this pronunciation:

Nancy Sinatra - These Boots Are Made For Walkin'
Aretha Franklin - Rose Is Still a Rose
Toni Braxton - Hit the Freeway
Garbage - The World is Not Enough
O-Town - We fit together



The maintenance of the /hw/~/w/ contrast:

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/maps/Map8.html

''The /hw~w/ distinction is completely absent in New York State, where it was registered quite strongly in the LAMSAS data. It is most clearly retained in two areas of the Eastern States: to a certain extent in Eastern New England (excluding Maine, as in the LAMSAS records), and quite solidly in the Lower South (excluding South Carolina, again echoing the LAMSAS data). It is also quite strongly maintained in Texas, particularly in the Dallas/Forth Worth region.

The scattering of distinct points in the Midwest does not clearly follow the North/North Midland isogloss. There are eight speakers who maintain the distinction north of that line, and nine south of it.''
Rick Johnson   Fri Oct 07, 2005 1:33 pm GMT
Yes, many English speakers tend to pronounce them the same these days. It was something I was thinking about only a few days ago. As Kenna D says it's still the norm in Scotland to pronounce the "h". With the exception of theatre actors, I would guess most English people don't pronounce the "h".
Gjones2   Fri Oct 07, 2005 4:22 pm GMT
>"It is most clearly retained in two areas of the Eastern States: to a certain extent in Eastern New England (excluding Maine, as in the LAMSAS records), and quite solidly in the Lower South (excluding South Carolina, again echoing the LAMSAS data)." [Kenna D]

I'm in South Carolina, and I definitely retain the /hw/~/w/ contrast. I believe that most of the people here retain it. I can't guarantee that there aren't places in the state where /hw/ isn’t used, but it will take more than a few samples to convince me. :-) If it's not hard for you to find the link, I'd be curious in seeing the explanation for excluding South Carolina from the rest of the Lower South. Occasionally I see detailed data from some of these linguistics sites that seem totally wacky to me. I have to suspect that sometimes they pick atypical speakers for their samples. (When I get the chance, I’ll try to get some South Carolinians to say something about whales. I'll describe the creatures -- without saying the word myself or letting them know that I'm interested in pronunciation -- and see which sound they use.)
Gjones2   Fri Oct 07, 2005 4:24 pm GMT
I hear /w/ for 'wh' in the national media often, but it still attracts my attention when the sound appears in a word that's emphasized. I recall an ad some years back (probably for a charity) that showed a series of sad scenes. As each one appeared, the narrator kept repeating '/w/y?' in an extremely plaintive tone. I was so distracted by the pronunciation that I couldn't take the message seriously. Maybe that's why I don't remember what the subject was.

I realize that this pronunciation is common in the country as a whole (and possibly even the predominant one), but it still sounds a bit odd to me. If I'm not mistaken, there was some controversy once -- probably decades ago -- when the editors of the NBC pronunciation guide chose the /w/ alternative for words like 'why'. That guide used to be very influential and was a standard for radio and TV announcers on other stations too.

Merriam-Webster, the American Heritage of the English Language, and Infoplease list both pronunciations -- with /hw/ first (I didn't check to see if the order is significant). WordSmyth also lists both but with /w/ first.