'wh' words

[Cecil Ward]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
An earlier contributor said:

>I can assure you that it is alive and kicking in Ireland and Scotland. It is the norm for us to the extent
that we find /w/-substitution incomprehensible when contextual information is inadequate.


And this accords with my experience of the various types of English I hear spoken here in the formerly Norse/Gaelic speaking Isle of Skye, Scotland. It seems to be true both for the English of Gaelic speakers and for that of English-monoglot highlanders.

Would anyone care to comment on the relationship between the modern regional distribution of /w/ vs /hw/ in Britain, and also Norwegian vs Swedish, say, and the old Germanic dialectal distributions?

Since another correspondant mentioned Gaelic, here's an aside: What happened to /hw-/ and /w-/ in these parts? Answer, they gave rise to /k-/ and /b/-words.

When English loans were taken into Gaelic in earlier centuries, the process of naturalisation had to deal with /hw/ and /w/, which, although both being present in Gaelic, may not occur in initial position in unmutated (radical, base) words. The solution was that all the English /hw/-words produced /k-/ and all the /w/-words /b-/. Hence
        "wall" ->       Gaelic "balla"
        "win" ->        Gaelic "buinnig"

        "wheel" ->      Gaelic "cuibhle" /k at jl@/        (where the @-sign is supposed to be a schwa)
        "whip" ->       Gaelic "cuip" /k at jhp/
        "The Whigs" ->  Gaelic "A' Chuigse" /@ xwIgs'@/

The two sounds of English therefore sounded very different to Gaelic ears.

The /h/ in /hw/, could occur in initial position, but only as a result of the grammatical initial mutation lenition, so it was analyzed as being the result of an assumed initial /k/ lenited to /x/ and realised as [h]. The /w/ in /hw/ was analyzed either as /u/ or taken as a labialised allophonic variant.

As for /w/-, neither could initial /w/ occur other as the result of a grammatical initial mutation, in this case from an assumed radical /b/ > grammatically lenited to produce /<beta>/ realised as <beta> / [w] / [v].

This is now part of history. In more recent times, increased exposure to English brought a new tolerance of English /w-/, giving a new process where /w-/ was loaned as /u-/ or /w-/. Example: "ueir" /we:r'/ (<"wire").