Hypercorrection of /w/-/hw/

[Laurence Horn]

>Interesting side bit... I never thought I came from a sincere /hw/ land, but
>after spending this past year *real* collected data, it turns out I do.
>Mostly (that is, for most of my speakers) it's just preserved to
>distinguish "when"
>from "win" (and less often "where" from "were"), but (and here's the fun
>part), I've also heard it pop up a couple of times in "well", in all
>age groups.
>Go figure.
>
>-doug
>

It's also used by some (e.g. me) ONLY as a second-order disambiguator
for distinguishing "whether" from "weather", "which" from "witch",
"where" from "wear", "whales" from "wails/Wales", and maybe a couple
of other similar cases involving minimal contrasts (not the ones
above, though, since their vowels differ in these parts).  The
relevant frames are "Did you say/mean "wh..." or "w..."? or "I said
"w...", not "wh..."

larry