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’wh’ sound in American English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Earle Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6315 days ago 276 posts - 276 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Norwegian, Spanish | Message 17 of 110 13 May 2009 at 4:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Not sure I understand that. Can an aspirated "w" be represented orthographically other than with "wh"? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5712 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 18 of 110 13 May 2009 at 5:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5712 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 19 of 110 13 May 2009 at 5:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I should elaborate.. It probably seems confusing that I qouted that in my original message because I wasn't addressing what was being said directly. 'twice' does produce an aspirated 'w' but I wouldn't consider a general orthographical representation of the phoneme 'wh'; I would consider it an exception. I hope that clears up what I was trying to say. To add to my original message.. I can use consistent phonological representation of the 'wh' phoneme whereas the person who says 'wut' cannot. After all, you wouldn't pronounce 'who' as 'woo' would you? That point can be argued sine there's no real 'w' sound in it, but it is aspirated. Edited by Rout on 13 May 2009 at 5:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5712 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 20 of 110 13 May 2009 at 5:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm getting worked up here.. =P
To further my point! I can distinguish between a WELL and a WHALE. The person who says 'wut' cannot unless he makes some kind of ridiculous sharade. I'll leave it at that for now, sorry about all the posts, haha. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| pmiller Account terminated Groupie Canada Joined 5674 days ago 99 posts - 104 votes Speaks: English* | Message 21 of 110 13 May 2009 at 7:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||
HAHA! God I love that clip. Yes, go with Brian's pronunciation - almost nobody pronounces 'wh' like 'hw' - the 'h' should be silent, so it's just 'w'. However, as I was thinking about it, I could come up with ONE instance where you might pronounce it like "hw" (and it's so suble that you can just disregard it altogether). I'm thinking that if you're really surprised to hear something, which is also funny somehow, so that your response is a loud, surprised "WHAT?" asked with a little laugh at the beginning, it will sound as if you're saying "HWAT?" or maybe "HHWAAT??" But really, I don't even think this counts, as the 'h' sound is actually the sound of a tiny laugh, so really, just forget it and pronounce 'wh' like 'w' (so that 'whales' sounds exactly like 'Wales', etc.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5712 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 22 of 110 13 May 2009 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
^^^^^personal preference with no logic or reason behind using it. BTW, plenty of people say 'hw.' Do some traveling. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6272 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 23 of 110 23 May 2009 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This is about American English. But usage varies in the UK. Scots tend to say hw. Standard English speech may favour it, but colloquial English, esp. in the South-East and London, does not. So you might have the phonetic representation wot for the speech of Londoners.
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| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5922 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 24 of 110 23 May 2009 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In American English...
Usually, older people say 'hwat' while younger people say 'wat'. The stereotypical british accent, as interpreted by Americans, is supposed to say 'hwat' and 'hwere'. There are probably seperate regions that say 'wales' and 'whales' differently, but I don't know of any. Personally, I don't see much use in saying 'hwat' instead of 'what'. Is there any other situation where homophones are caused by saying 'w' instead of 'hw'? Feel free to say it as 'hwat', but in general American usage (from personal experience), I find that 'what' is much more common. This reminds me of a song I heard: 'The Masochism Tango'. There was a part where the singer said '...your whips, dear', only he pronounced 'whip' as 'hwip'. It sounded very weird when I first heard it, but now I think it's cute. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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