Which-witch merger

Is there any regions that natively distinguish the phonemes /w/ and /W/? In other words, does anyone out there differentiate between the pronunciations of words such as "which" and "witch", "whales" and "Wales" etc?

I've heard them pronounced differently in some old educational audio tapes but I've never heard anyone distinguish them in real life. I've actually heard some people (especially English teachers) that seems to have learned to pronounce them differently like /w/ and /hw/, but most of them don't seem to have the distinction natively, probably because the distinction is made predominantly when they're exaggerating the difference.

Thanks in advance!

Sho

Personally, I use /hw/ for "wh"; /w/ for "w". However, it seems that I *do* lose the initial /h/ somewhat when I am not being overly conscious of it, or when I am not stressing the word.

Otherwise, they're distinguished--totally separate phonemes in my mind.

I find that especially in British English that the /h/ is lost in all cases...but that's just my personal observation.

Hope I don't really need a hearing aid

<<does anyone out there differentiate between the pronunciations of words such as "which" and "witch">>

though this is on a different note, I also seem to pronounce the "t" more in 'witch', as /wiTch/ where I do not for 'which' /hwich/ where the 'ch' sound is softer...

I just realized that

Josh, is that also common for my dialectal area of the SouthEast US?