"wh" words - was "no subject"

[Tom Zurinskas]

My take is that "wh" is most often pronounced ~w instead of ~hw (for those instances other than those meant to be pronounced ~h as in "who", "whole" etc.).  This applies to the list of "wh" words previously given.

The dictionaries are incorrect putting the ~hw pronunciation first.  Yet many if not all of them do.  The pronunciations in the talking dictionaries demonstrate the error.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
see truespel.com phonetic spelling



>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: David Bowie
> Subject: Re: "wh" words - was "no subject" (UNCLASSIFIED)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From: Paul Johnston
>
> [Referring to the sound in the which~witch contrast:]
>
>> It's usually simply a voiceless "w" among people who have it in the
>> States, as far as I know.
>
> In Wasatch Front (and Wasatch Back, i'm pretty sure) Utah, where this
> distinction survives, there's actually intraspeaker variation between
> producing as a voiceless [w] and as a [hw] cluster, as well as a
> fully voiced [w]. I haven't analyzed it anywhere close to deeply
> enough to be able to say more than that all these variants exist,
> though.
>
> David Bowie
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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