[hw-] v. [w]

[Benjamin Zimmer]

Quoting Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com>:

> Tonight, on a TV cartoon show, "Family Man," I think that it was, the
> characters kicked around the [hw-] v. lw] pronunciations, with one of
> the [hw-]-speaking characters jokingly noting that, e.g. [wip] in
> place of [hwip] sounded "wheird" [hwird].
>
> [wip] in place of [hwip] doesn't sound "wheird," but it does sound
> weird. Well not really, though I'm a [hw-] speaker.

That's "Family Guy"... it must've been a repeat of an episode from last
December. See Mark Liberman's post on Language Log:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003988.html


--Ben Zimmer

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