W vs. WH - a Linguistic Pet Peeve
Megabox,
You write "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."
I beg to differ. Whilst I certainly don't suggest the distinction should be taught, I don't agree that it should not be taught.
What I say is that it is best left up to the teacher. If the teacher naturally makes the distinction, then it would be natural that he teach it. If he does not, then it would be natural for him not to teach it. Any other approach would involve the teacher's teaching unnatural English i.e. a form which does not come naturally to him. There is no standard English.
That said, I wouldn't recommend any teacher insist on having students make the distinction. I don't believe any good teacher would.
An interesting aside on this is the situation in Japan. In general Japanese transliterations of English words into katakana attempt to maintain the distinction. Japanese primary school teachers (who in general don't know any better) tend to reinforce the resualtant pronunciations.
The problem is that they transliterate it as if it were /hw/ which is impossible in Japanese phonology (note that there is no /w/-/W/ distinction in Japanese so this wouldn't be an option either). This leads to some peculiar pronunciations such as "howaito" for "white" and "hoipu" for "whip". In this case the distinction should have been ignored.
<<What I say is that it is best left up to the teacher. If the teacher naturally makes the distinction, then it would be natural that he teach it. If he does not, then it would be natural for him not to teach it. Any other approach would involve the teacher's teaching unnatural English i.e. a form which does not come naturally to him.>>
I don't find any problem teaching students stuff different from my native dialect. If I were an ESL teacher, I certainly wouldn't teach the ESL students my Jamaican dialect.
Many CBC* newscasters retain wh/w contrast.
[*Canadian national tv]
I remember I had a high school English teacher who made the /w/-/W/ distinction. The annoying thing was when she was teaching us about alliteration, and she said, "If there's a word with 'w' followed by a word with 'wh', that's not alliteration." Even if the author in question didn't make the distinction, and even though the overwhelming majority of Americans and the almost complete majority of English people don't make the distinction, it still doesn't count because she says so.
>>I remember I had a high school English teacher who made the /w/-/W/ distinction. The annoying thing was when she was teaching us about alliteration, and she said, "If there's a word with 'w' followed by a word with 'wh', that's not alliteration." Even if the author in question didn't make the distinction, and even though the overwhelming majority of Americans and the almost complete majority of English people don't make the distinction, it still doesn't count because she says so. <<
That's fine. Just respell the "wh" words for her. e.g. w'at, w'ich, w'en.
I don't suppose she accepts the fact that there's alliteration in "nice knapsack" and "naughty knight"?
<<[I know Hwen to talk, and I know Hwen to touch 1:00-1:07]>>
That's not at all surprising, because the lead singer is Scottish (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Manson ). Scotland is one of the areas where the [w]-[W] is maintained.
>><<What I say is that it is best left up to the teacher. If the teacher naturally makes the distinction, then it would be natural that he teach it. If he does not, then it would be natural for him not to teach it. Any other approach would involve the teacher's teaching unnatural English i.e. a form which does not come naturally to him.>>
I don't find any problem teaching students stuff different from my native dialect. If I were an ESL teacher, I certainly wouldn't teach the ESL students my Jamaican dialect.<<
That might be easy to say in the case of, say, a Jamaican dialect which is quite distant from any standard form. However, it is not so simple for a native speaker of, say, a Northern Cities Vowel Shift-affected dialect, who may speak a formal register which is relatively close to a standard variety and which yet has significant differences from such with respect to details such as vowel system. If such an individuals were to become an English teacher they would effectively end up teaching students a significantly different vowel system from the closest standard, and yet it would be unlikely that one would suggest that they themselves learn a particular standard variety as if it were a foreign language (which would be ridiculous at best and insulting at worst).
As an Australian, I certainly would not look too kindly at anyone who might suggest I teach any "standard" English.
For ESL teaching, I think strong regional accents should be avoided. For example, Jamaican accent is obviously out, except maybe in Jamaica. NCVS should probably not be taught, or New York, Boston, etc. accents. That said, teachers who vary slightly from "General American" (whatever that really is) should not try to adapt to the standard. They also should not teach distinctions that the standard does not. If a teacher makes the witch-which distinction, fine, but don't correct the students if they say [w] for both. Think about another example. Some Americans and many Scots make a distinction between 'horse' /hOrs/ and 'hoarse' /ho:rs/. I think it would be ridiculous to tell an ESL student that they're making a mistaking if they say 'hoarse' as [hOr\s].
>>For ESL teaching, I think strong regional accents should be avoided. For example, Jamaican accent is obviously out, except maybe in Jamaica. NCVS should probably not be taught, or New York, Boston, etc. accents. That said, teachers who vary slightly from "General American" (whatever that really is) should not try to adapt to the standard. They also should not teach distinctions that the standard does not. If a teacher makes the witch-which distinction, fine, but don't correct the students if they say [w] for both. Think about another example. Some Americans and many Scots make a distinction between 'horse' /hOrs/ and 'hoarse' /ho:rs/. I think it would be ridiculous to tell an ESL student that they're making a mistaking if they say 'hoarse' as [hOr\s].<<
The case of the NCVS, though, complicates such because it varieties with it do not really stand in opposition to some more standard, formal variety without it; rather, both the local informal variety and the local formal variety have been affected by it (even though informal speech is more heavily influenced, as historical /{/ is more diphthongized and higher in informal speech than in formal speech here, and the shifting of historical /O/ all the way to [A] is more likely in informal speech than in formal speech here). This is unlike, say, the New York dialect, where you can speak of clear opposition between it and more General American-like varieties. One must remember that the NCVS is not a dialect but rather a sound shift, which has applied to a range of different dialects across register lines. Consequently, one cannot simply say that one "should not teach NCVS", as English teachers from the Upper Midwest are likely to speak with it, albeit maybe not quite as strongly perhaps, even in their formal speech.
One was taught from an early age to pronounce "white" as hwhite. I rather think it depends on schooling when discussing England.
I'm not SpaceFlight... whoever that is...
Anyway, "w" and "wh" are usually pronounced the same in America, except for some scattered places. I always assumed it was a Yankee thing, but Hank Hill on King of the Hill says "wh" (of course, he was born in New York, but whatever) so I'm not sure...
When it comes to America, is the "w" and "wh" distinction is more pronounced in the ex-British colonies or is that an over-simplification?
I don't think my colonial theory works down under.
Of course NCVS presents a different situation than Boston or New York accents, but I still think that for new learners of English, it is best not to teach it to them. Because NCVS realizations are so different from General American and other regional accents, ESL students may analyse a vowel they learn from an NCVS-affected teacher differently than from another. For example, a francophone learning English in Syracuse might analyse 'top' as /tap/, all phonemes that occur in French. However, it is also likely that this student will be exposed to non-NCVS English, and will learn that his /a/ is equivalent to English /{/ and will change his pronunciation to /t{p/. This will cause great confusion, especially outside of NCVS areas. This speaker will analyse /{/, /A/, /O/ (in NCVS areas [e@], [a], [A]) as equivalent to French /E/, /a/, /A/, and will be confused to learn that English has all these sounds, but applies them to different phonemes! In short, I suppose if an ESL student knew they would be staying in an NCVS area, they would do alright, but if they had to communicate with someone outside of the area, they might be in trouble.