hawk/hock

[Mark A Mandel]

On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, Catherine Aman wrote:

#My grandmother had an accent that seems to be gone forever. I've forgotten
#many of her distinctive phrasings, but do remember that she pronounced
#"world" as "whirled"

So do I; to me these are exact homophones. Likewise, I suspect, for the
people whose cars carry the bumper sticker "Visualize whirled peas", a
parody of "Visualize world peace". And AHD4 gives the prons
        whirl: hwu^rl, wu^rl (u-circumflex)
        world: wu^rld
 indicating homophony for wh/h-mergers, like me. How do you distinguish
them?

-- Mark A. Mandel