> You realize that map represents only 62 speakers in the whole country making
> the distinction, and only 26 of those in the South? This is not especially rigorous
> or convincing (though it doesn’t conflict with my own impressions).
It’s as convincing as most polls. They used 587 speakers. (That’s close to the size of most election polls, and the math says that it’s actually a reasonably good poll.) 516 of them didn’t make a distinction between /w/ and /wh/, 62 made a distinction, and 9 of them were close enough that it was hard to tell. (So about an eighth of Americans make the distinction.) Nearly all the 62 who made the distinction were in the southeast or the near midwest or a limited proportion of New England, and it looks like it’s a majority in the southeast and a minority in the near midwest and that proportion of New England. There are a scattered amount of distinction-makers in the rest of the U.S., but it’s clearly a minority there.
Another Midwesterner here, I almost never aspirate the “wh” sound. Markxxx’s example of wet vs whet is a good one, for me also that would be one of the rare cases I would sound the “h”.
Ditto. When I was a kid, I vaguely remember someone saying that aspirating it was “the proper way”–might have been a teacher,
might have been my grandmother–but we totally don’t do it.
Interesting discussion. I did a quick self-test and find that I don’t pronounce the “h” sound in “what” or “which.” I do pronounce it in “when,” “where,” and a bit in “whether.” It seems that there is a continuum with respect to how much of the “h” is pronounce. When I pay close attention, it seems that I make the movements to include the “h” in “what,” but just don’t aspirate. You can say that it’s a silent “h” for me in “what.” I don’t seem to do the same for “which.”
For valid tests, you’d have to also say the same sounds without the “w” or “wh” in front. Perhaps there’s more aspiration just from the different vowel sounds following the “w”/wh".
I was annoyed when that gag came out, because it’s been my long-time habit to pronounce “Miracle Whip” with the aspiration and emphasis on the second word.
I grew up in Dallas and I’ve always pronounced the wh (except in “who”). My sister, who grew up in the same house, does not. Oddly, I never noticed it until she mentioned it as an adult. I might have been the only aspirator and not noticed it.
I found this joke very confusing: It’s under there. Under where? Made you say underwear!
Perhaps spelling pronunciation might be a more accurate term. I think that for many people it’s an affectation arising from seeing how the word is spelled, much like pronouncing the t in “often” and the c in “victuals”.
I’ve lived in the Northeast, the Southeast, the Midwest, and briefly in England and I’ve never heard anyone do this except for on TV, that I can recall - I’ve certainly never been anyplace where it was common or normal.
note: I originally typed “I’ve loved in the Northeast, the Southeast, etc.” by accident - I considered leaving it that way before deciding to fix it…
Well, it can be a spelling pronunciation. Apparently the uncommon word “whelk” was never aspirated historically; the -h- is essentially a misspelling, and I know I said “hwelk” until I learned better.
I learned the distinction organically, from my Canadian mother, but my Californian peers did not make it, and I lost it in speech as a child. For me, it is definitely a bit of a hypercorrection. Even a pretentious hypercorrection, since it doesn’t really work with my accent. (Although a linguist friend did confirm I make the “correct” [ʍ] and not the “hypercorrect” [hw].) I like the distinction, so I make an effort, but I can’t really claim it’s genuine.
Curt is correct, IMO. I’m certain that the DARE map is off (possibly a bad sample?) as there was a clear /w/ -/hw/ dichotomy in Jefferson, Oswego, and Onondaga Counties, NY, which appear with the (.) no differentiation symbol on the DARE map.
In any case, I think Ruken is generalizing from his own experience (sometimes a valid exercise, sometimes not) – some normal dialectal usages seem to be absolutely affectations to the ear not used to them. I talked recently with two kids with absolutely no pretensions who had spent their early years on Long Island and then been raised in rural North Carolina – it was jarring to hear them reference their father’s sisters as their aunts with a broad /aw/ sound – the dialects I was used to render that vowel a /â/ much the same as the one in ‘ant’ or ‘rat’. But it was by no means an affectation for them – just how they’d naturally been raised to say the word.
It is quite clear that the distinction between the /w/ and the /wh/ sounds is not a recent thing. It goes back to proto-Indo-European:
Most of the common words that start with a /wh/ sound in some dialects of English (and which are still spelled with a “wh”) go back to words in proto-Indo-European that started with a /kw/ sound. These words tended to keep the /kw/ sounds in other branches of Indo-European, but the sound changed to /hw/ in the Germanic branch. Eventually in English it changed to /wh/ and then in most dialects it changed to /w/, although it remained /wh/ in some dialects.
