If you check WIktionary, you’ll see that ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘where’ were all spelt ‘hw…’ in Old English. I think it was Norman scribes who thought it would look tidier if the letters were swapped round to match the other ‘consonant - h’ spellings (at least one of which, ‘ch’, they also introduced).
In Scotland, the ‘h’ is still clearly pronounced in these words.
I was just about to post that !
I was under the impression that nothing was pronounced clearly in Scotland. Their accent at full strength is quite a sight to behold. Or a sound to hear. 
Do you really think that hearing this type of lame patter for the 15427th time is going to be amusing for me?
That’s it!
Ditto. Southern Michigan, 1960s.
I too was taught that “hw” was the “correct” pronunciation of “wh” even though it isn’t correct in my dialect and I suspect not in the teacher’s dialect either.
My favourite use of that pronunciation in literature was, I think, on Barney Miller although I might be wrong. A customer at the precinct was asking to be put into a witness protection program. A federal agent was brought in to facilitate this and eventually said he could give the perp a new identity in North Dakota*.
The perp asked, “what do they have in North Dakota?”. The agent just answered, “wheat!”
Probably not super funny but the “hweat” pronunciation made it hysterical.
*might have been another rural, prairie state
Ditto. Southwestern Ohio 1970s-1980s.
I was apparently the only one in my class who paid attention to this lesson and I still maintain the which-witch distinction in my speech.
Although I don’t pronounce it like a strong /hw/, which is what makes Stewie sound silly.
Oh, we paid attention to it. I’d bet most my classmates still remember it. We just ignored it, because that’s not how we talk in the neighborhood. That’s not how our parents talked; that’s not how our neighbors talked. You learn your own dialect. If we wanted to switch it up, many of us could, but that distinction isn’t important anymore in terms of “prestige dialect” vs “local dialect” so there’s no reason to.
Well, my parents are immigrants, so I didn’t talk like that. My classmates were boors, and my neighbors were morons. So, I and my little group picked and chose what sounded good to us. And what usually sounded good was in books and films, especially if it was different from those around us.
The whine/wine distinction is retained in Ireland. We distinguish Wales and whales, wear and where, witch and which, y and why. I hear it as a /h/ before the w.
This pronunciation is not associated in any way with “putting on airs”, it’s fairly universal here.
As a child I first became aware that English people don’t generally make this distinction because of puns that didn’t work for me.
Dr Jackson Crawford mentioned this in a recent video as a feature of his speech that is rare in America. He is from Montana.
Crawford has adopted the distinction by choice, as I have, apparently. It’s not part of his native dialect. In my opinion, he overpronounces the /h/
I found the Jackson Crawford video. It’s cued up to the point where he starts talking about the “wh” sound:
Very interesting.
I’m very surprised at how many people here were taught this in school. I grew up in the 60s - 70s (Minnesota) and don’t remember every hearing about this.