# Questioning questioning

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questioning-questioning/553519>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 12, 2010, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questioning-questioning/553519 "2010-09-12T17:03:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\
**Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questioning-questioning/553519/1 "2010-09-12T17:03:34Z")

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What, where, when, why, who-The “W” is pronounced in all but the last.  
The reason is…?

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**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\
**Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questioning-questioning/553519/2 "2010-09-12T17:36:23Z")

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> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> What, where, when, why, who-The “W” is pronounced in all but the last.  
> The reason is…?

They all used to start with a ‘hw’ and developed differently, like words do. My WAG, ‘hoo’ is easier to pronounce, as is ‘hat’, ‘here’, ‘hen’ and ‘hy’, but all the latter gives you a word that already means something else, which was a barrier to such a simplification in pronunciation.

In the Scandinavian languages, these pronouns are mostly pronounced with just a ‘v’, and spelled as such in Swedish while Norwegian (bokmål) and Danish have kept the ‘hv’ spelling. In the other Norwegian written form the ‘hv’ has morphed into ‘kv’ in pronunciation and spelling.

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**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\
**Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questioning-questioning/553519/3 "2010-09-12T18:35:30Z")

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Get yourself a copy of _Chamber’s Dictionary of Etymology_. One of my ten bestest books.

While I don’t have a font that allows me to include all of the wonderful marks that linguists use when talking about language and pronunciation, I’ll type what they have to say.

> [@](#):
>
> The pronunciation\* (hu)_, like that of [two (tu), from Old English twa, developed in the process of labialization of the vowel (influenced by the sound represented by w.) This labialization or rounding of the vowel in the Middle English pronunciation (who) resulted in a shift to (_(whu)\* , and finally to _(hu)_ when the sound represented by _w_ disappeared before the related _u-sound._.

Is that perfectly clear? 😃

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**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\
**Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questioning-questioning/553519/4 "2010-09-12T18:46:57Z")

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> [@naita](#):
>
> > [@Czarcasm](#):
> >
> > What, where, when, why, who-The “W” is pronounced in all but the last.  
> > The reason is…?
> 
> In the Scandinavian languages, these pronouns are mostly pronounced with just a ‘v’, and spelled as such in Swedish while Norwegian (bokmål) and Danish have kept the ‘hv’ spelling.

And in Icelandic: hvað, hvar, hvenær, af hverju, hver. But in each case the “hv” cluster is pronounced as “kv”.