wh-clusters

[Alice Faber]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Clodagh Lynam wrote:
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>Hallo Histlingers
>
>I am a Hiberno-English speaker, born and raised in Dublin.
>I have been teaching phonetics at tutorial level since 1987.
>In my experience, there are very few Hiberno-English speakers who
>do *not* distinguish between 'wh-' and 'w-'.  However, my son, who was
>also born and raised in Dublin and is now 16, made no distinction until he
>was about 8 or 9 years old - what to make of that??

I can find absolutely nothing on my bookshelf to back this up, but my
gut feeling is that 'wh' might simply be a late-acquired sound. The
only chart I can find of order of phonological acquisition, from a
British, source, goes up through age 4 1/2 or so; but there are other
sounds that some kids don't fully control until their second or third
year of primary school (r/w contrast, l, s/th, etc), and it wouldn't
surprise me to find 'wh' in that group.

--
 =============================================================================
Alice Faber                                             faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                                  tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
New Haven, CT 06511 USA                                     fax (203) 865-8963