Hypercorrection of /w/-/hw/

[Mark A. Mandel]

On May 24, 2004, at 10:12 AM, Peter A. McGraw wrote:

> I'm not sure whether this is regional, but I don't recall ever hearing the
> original "Whoa!" pronounced that way by people who actually dealt with
> horses...

Arnold Zwicky replied:

        >>>

nor do i (and i used to hang out with lots of people who dealt with
horses).  that's why i carefully talked about the discourse marker
"whoa", which doesn't necessarily have the same properties as the horse
command "whoa":
        <<<

I have often seen the word spelled "woah", generally or always as a
discourse marker.

-- Mark Mandel
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]