twoth

[Wilson Gray]

Once upon a time, I would have bet that all black people distinguished
/hw/ from /w/. But the distinction is now clearly beginning to be
lost, especially in the East. The distinction is maintained west of
the Mississippi - Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Arizona, California - by
both blacks and whites, in my experience, FWIW.

-Wilson

On Jan 26, 2008 11:26 PM, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      Re: twoth
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >For me, the claim that /hw/ could be replaced by /w/ by a
> >native speaker of English was nonsense. There was no way that such a
> >title could be a pun. At the Army Language School, a barracksmate once
> >asked whether I had noticed that the "h" in words beginning with "wh"
> >was not pronounced. ....
>
> I had the same sort of reaction in approx. 1970:
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0203C&L=ADS-L&D=0&I=-3&P=7216
>
> I did a mini-experiment on a couple of youngsters a while back:
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0203B&L=ADS-L&D=0&I=-3&P=2580
>
> Times are a-changing, I guess.
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>
>
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