This is probably a regional phenomenon. Has anyone noticed a difference in meaning between the phrases “a while ago” where it is pronounced as three distinct words and the i pronounced with a distinct long i sound and “while ago” where it is pronounced as one word and the i has a sort of schwa sound?
I’d like to see y’all’s responses before I expound further. I’ll post later if anyone responds.
To my California ears the first sounds normal and the second is Tarzan speak.
Same to my east coast ears
I believe I have never hear any variation of “awhile ago” or “while ago” pronounced with a long I sound. Did you mean a long A sound and typo’ed, or is there yet another way for Americans to butcher the language I’ve somehow missed?
In my own usage, and that of the people around the country I’ve dealt with, “uh while ago” or “schwa while ago” are common.
Anyone completely losing the leading vowel from “awhile”, or worse yet, using the vocabulary word “while” as a direct substitute for the vocabulary word “awhile”, is too much of a yokel for me to talk to.
“Long time ago” (as opposed to “a long time ago”) seems to have been in use at some point:
I’ve heard something similar, but it’s been a long time, and the speakers were adult, southern, and rural. To my memory it sounded more like ‘hwollago,’ but no difference in context. I’m in a region where most speakers give that initial aspiration in most ‘wh’ words, but that’s a separate discussion.
How would you possibly pronounce “while” without a long I sound!? “Whale”? “Wahhl”?
In some places, “while ago” is pronounced like wallago, all one word. But it is not pronounced that way when the entire phrase is “a while ago.” From the responses so far, this seems to be a regional thing.
At least in some places, the lexeme “a while ago” with the long I sound means something occurred in the distant past whereas “while ago” pronounced wallago means in the near past. What is the distant past and what is the recent past depends on context. Users will use both of these lexemes, but not interchangeably.
That’s also consistent with my memory, that it referred to recent past.
Thank you.
I had first utterly misinterpreted the OP’s meaning, then failed to state my wrong, irrelevant response very well.
So never mind me; that was a total 
.
There is the variation “whilom”, but I am not going to lie to you and claim I have heard someone say it out loud. (Also, I am not sure it means precisely the same thing.)