|
|
W vs. WH - a Linguistic Pet Peeve
<<This exact message has been posted before. I smell trollery, as it's popped up here before.>>
When has it popped up here before? I just checked the archives and they suggest that this is the only time that this message has been posted, because it's not in archives.
I have the Wales-whales merger ([W]--->[w]), and most people here in central Massachusetts appear to have it as well. It seems like the only people who I can remember making the distinction are high school English teachers. ;-)
''wh'' and ''w'' are the same for me. I also pronounce ''human'', ''huge'', ''humongous'', ''hew'' etc. as /juman/, /judZ/, /jumVNg@s/, /ju/ etc. ''hew'' and ''yew'' are homonyms for me, which is quite common here in New York and in the accent of Phildelphia.
<<Kirk,
IF it is him, these shenanigans, as you call them, may keep him of the street and that may be a good thing.>> It is him. He's also posted that thread and other nearly identical ones under SpaceFlight over at unilang. SpaceFlight, there are more interesting ways of introducing these topics without making up a ton of noms de plume and copying and pasting. <<''wh'' and ''w'' are the same for me. I also pronounce ''human'', ''huge'', ''humongous'', ''hew'' etc. as /juman/, /judZ/, /jumVNg@s/, /ju/ etc. ''hew'' and ''yew'' are homonyms for me, which is quite common here in New York and in the accent of Phildelphia.>> Yeah I have a professor right now from NYC and he has those pronunciations as well. The class is a linguistics class--language acquisition, to be specific, so naturally the word "human" comes up all the time.
here in England, h-dropping is pretty common: have [aev], home [@um], which [witch], hope [@up]...
PS h in vehicle is close to hw/w... ['vihikl] is still used by some Americans :)
For those speakers who make the distinction between /w/ and /hw/, what is /hw/ realized as? I find it hard to believe that it is really always [W], since [W] has a very distinctive sound I think I would have noticed if it were used by (according to the link posted above) 10% of American speakers. So can /hw/ be realized as something much closer to [w], maybe as [hw], [p\] or [p\w]?
I take offense at people looking down at me if I dont say HUH-wales.such a thing has happened to me.Theres alot of things i dont do to perfection.dont sweat the small stuff.
It reminds me of a line from Britain's favourite comedy series, Only Fools and Horses, where Rodney Trotter, who's the type of guy who is concerned about the welfare of the planet, meets his older brother Derek "Del Boy" Trotter (who's a bit thick and his only interested in trying to find devious ways to make money rather than saving the planet) in the Nag's Head pub whilst asking customers to put money in his "Save the Whales" collection box.
Rodney: (says something like) "Aren't you going to put money in my charity box?" Del Boy - "Why, what's it for?" Their friend Trigger - "He's trying to save whales." Del Boy - "No, no. They get nothing from me. Not the way they beat us in rugby last year."
I think it is /w/ for al of Florida. Perhaps someone has hijacked the name "SpaceFlight" over at Unilang?
<<Perhaps someone has hijacked the name "SpaceFlight" over at Unilang?>>
No one has hijacked the name over at Unilang.
So I'm interested, did you or didn't you start this topic? Seems unlikely for you to have started it since you pronounce "w" and "wh" as /w/ and it could hardly be your pet peeve that people don't distinguish it. However, there have been allegations that "SpaceFlight" starts topics dealing with the same things over at Unilang.
<<Seems unlikely for you to have started it since you pronounce "w" and "wh" as /w/ and it could hardly be your pet peeve that people don't distinguish it. However, there have been allegations that "SpaceFlight" starts topics dealing with the same things over at Unilang.>>
No it's not my pet peeve. Click on the link in the first post of this thread. Here it is http://www.geocities.com/bprice1949/wvswh.html
<<When I was a young man in the Air Force I heard a guy talking with a friend about Wales. This caught my attention, since I had an interest in Wales and the Welsh language. But when I tried to join in his conversation all I got from him was a puzzled look. We went back and forth for a while until I finally realized that he hadn't been talking about Wales at all. He had been talking about whales!
But I had distinctly heard him say Wales. So I attempted to clarify. "You mean whales," I said. "Yes, Wales." "Wales? But that's the country Wales, not whales. You're talking about whales." "Yes, like I said, Wales.">> "Wales" and "whales" consequently are not homophones for me "Wales" being /weU/, while "whales" is /weUz/. <<For me they are not homonyms. WH is pronounced as if it were spelled "HW", whereas W is simply a W. In other words, WH is aspirated, and W is not. "Which" and "witch" are as different to me as the words "hill" and "ill".>> "which" and "witch" are pronounced as identical in my speech as the words "hill" and "ill" <<About ten years later I was an ESL teacher in California. One of my colleagues prepared a lesson in which he taught the difference between WH and W to his students. "W is voiced," he explained, "but WH is unvoiced." When I read his explanation I disagreed with him, saying that the difference was in aspiration, not voice. "Nonsense," he scoffed. "For WHERE you don't say 'Huh-wear'." Well, neither do I. And I don't say "huh-ill" for "hill".>> The difference should not be taught to ESL students as the distinction is only made by a minority of English speakers. "w" and "wh" are pronounced the same in standard English. <<Some people I have interviewed concede the difference between WH and W, but admit that in ordinary speech they don't bother to make the distinction. By not making the distinction they are participating in an evolutionary process of language that eliminates minimal pairs. Minimal pairs are word pairs used to determine the lowest level of phoneme that can distinguish one word from another.>> Indeed. It's called a phonemic merger. <<English spelling is ample proof of the fact that WH was originally meant to be distinguished from W. "Whales" and "Wales" are spelled differently; so are "whether/weather", "whither/wither", "whine/wine", "where/wear", "when/wen", "whee/we", and "whiz/wiz." (The last one is particularly amusing. I am sure there are people out there who actually think that "whiz" is an abbreviation of "wizard.") These words are spelled differently because they are meant to be pronounced differently.>> What about "two", "too" and "to", "meet" and "meat", "bred" and "bread", "one" and "won", "knight" and "night", "principal" and "principle" etc. Those are spelled different, so are those meant to be pronounced differently too? <<But with the passage of time languages tend to simplify themselves, grammatically and phonetically. English has lost the bulk of its original verb conjugations, and the orthography is cluttered with silent letters.>> There are also many language changes that occur that result in things more complex than the original. <<Now our generation is witnessing another simplification - the slow death of WH and all of its minimal pairs. With the loss of minimal pairs, the number of homonyms in the language increases. When homonyms increase, the language becomes ambiguous. Ambiguity is not a good thing.>> "wine" and "whine" for example, refer to very different things and are never confused even when pronounced the same way. <<This little difference of dialect has for me developed into a pet peeve. I wince every time I hear a good healthy WH being lopped in half, reduced to an anemic W. The President lives in the White House, not the Wight House for crying out loud! And those things that turn around on your car are wheels, not weals! And you don't wet your appetite, you whet it! Who ever heard of a wet appetite?>> To me, it's the use of /W/ for "wh" words that sounds weird and even slightly annoying. Such is not heard here in Jamaica. |