I have said hwat, hwen, hwy and so on for some seven decades, since that was hwat I learned first at home and then in school (Bethesda and Albuquerque.) Over the years, I noticed it was less common, and the lack thereof struck me unpleasantly at first; my sons (now in their early 40’s) did not emulate that pronunciation, and indeed sometimes mocked me for it because “nobody else does it.” Sorry, kids, you’re wrong; quite a number of my contemporaries continue to do so, though I believe more commonly in the northeast than the southwest.
OP has been sufficiently taken to task for his so-charming demand; I shall expatiate no further.
In the US, the wh vs w distinction seems most to be preserved in parts of the South. You can find a map here. I was taught the /hw/ pronunciation growing up here in Chicago (the actual sound is not exactly an /h/ followed by a /w/, but that’s the way it tends to be transcribed), but everyone ignored it. The only time I ever use the “/hw/” pronunciation is for affected emphasis.
Many people here have mentioned that they were taught /hw/ as a trained affection. That is, it was not a natural part of the accent.
There’s a lot of stupid out there about language, often spouted by elementary school teachers as we’ve seen today, but really? Think about English pronunciation and spelling for a minute or two and get back to us on this one.
I don’t think so. Those of us who were taught the /hw/ pronunciation (I was one such) were not taught that it was a “trained affectation.” We were taught that it was the correct pronunciation of that digraph.
But that is pretty close to what would actually get you pegged as pretentious. People hear people use [ʍ] all the time and mostly don’t notice it. But, if you go around overemphasizing it, especially in a place where some do actually have the merger, it comes off as you pretentiously promoting your pronunciation as correct. Which, since you’d be doing it out of spite, wouldn’t be far from the truth.
I’d just suggest going forth and speaking the way you speak and letting other people speak the way they speak. Sure, it may sound a bit old-fashioned, but, if you’re actually older, that’s not going to be the only such thing.
Oh, look, we are already in the Pit, so I can cuss you out.
You nitwit, do you think English is natural? It’s all learned. I was taught it by my mother, not some cartoon schoolmarm. It’s not “hyper-correction,” it is the dialect of my people. And yes, you ignoramus snob, my people are more bookish and educated than yours. You really want to engage in snobbery on behalf of people who can’t, ever, tell the difference between wear and where?
I pronounce the h because there’s an h in it.
Teaching language involves breaking the bad habits that kids pick up, not just insisting that their babytalk and mispronunciation is natural. A certain amount of language conservatism is good; it keeps the definitions in the lexicon from drifting too fast, and the pronunciations from becoming unintelligible.
People overlooked the fact that I do not pronounce the l in “wolf” until high school speech class, when I was mocked for it by the other kids. I know that I pronounce “Barry” and “bury” as “berry,” and “Mary” and “marry” as “merry.” I get it, I speak a degenerate Midwestern dialect, probably corrupted when German-speakers tried to adopt English in great numbers and got the vowels wrong.
Now you want to tell me I’m wrong for the bit I actually do pronounce correctly? You are a hateful, disgusting snob.
You realize what you’re doing, right? You’re engaging in snobbery against people who don’t share your degenerate dialect. (And no, I didn’t call you a “degenerate.” If you had actually bothered to study English formally instead of “l’arnin’ id on da street,” maybe you’d understand that.)
In the end, this is what “descriptivism” is used to justify. Prescriptivism of a very specific kind, wherein the* nouveau* (mis)pronunciations of the ruling class are “good” because they are sociologically high status, and educated persons from the provinces are mocked not only for what they get wrong (by historical standards) but what they get right, but differently.
This is why I hate it when people say things like, “I’m a descriptivist,” “There is no right answer,” and, “Grammar is an archaic delusion.” Because this is what it turns into. Just a way to insist that you’re better than people because of the way you talk, even when the way you talk is, objectively, stupid.
I understand your position far better than you think.
Modern schools of linguistic thought have generated thousands of nitwits who don’t even understand the purpose of descriptivism, but just want to privilege their own adolescent patois over grammar teachers they thought were uncool.
The *h *is pronounced because it changes the meaning. It’s OK if you don’t pronounce it all the time. It’s not OK if you don’t think it’s ever supposed to be there.
Those of us who actually understand the linguistics of English understand that there are good reasons to have less formal and more formal pronunciations, and less clear and more clear pronunciations. “Schoolmarms” got one thing right. If you teach children to pronounce different words with different pronunciations instead of collapsing them into homophones, you give them a greater ability to speak quickly and clearly with less confusion. That’s a good thing. Language is a technology, we may as well use it well.
We all learn language without being taught it. Everyone does. If the pronunciation is part of your accent, then it is your accent, just as it is for many in Scotland, and you will learn it. If it was instructed, by a parent or teacher with misguided notions of propriety, centuries after it left your accent, then it’s an affectation.
Didn’t do that whole thinking about it for a minute thing, did you? I suppose you also pronounce the t in castle, and the voiced velar fricative in light. Knife: I pronounce the k because *there’s a *k in it!
When a sound change has happened generations ago, how far back should we dig to put it back in for the sake of intelligibility?
I never said it’s wrong. I said it’s a trained affection in most cases. You’re welcome to say what you want. I use many trained affectations when I speak. Sometimes I even resurrect anachronistic pronunciations for fun and profit. The notion that it is somehow more proper or more correct is laughable. It is a fringe pronunciation. It is not a prestige pronunciation.
It is not, however, an incorrect pronunciation, and I will never call it that.
I for one am grateful that you are here to share your college degree in linguistics with us. Otherwise we wouldn’t know whose authority to appeal to.
I’d just suggest going forth and speaking the way you speak and letting other people speak the way they speak./QUOTE]
Oh brother. Say, how about you refrain from making suggestions based in facetious comments?
My grandmother never did learn to pronounce th, she just used the t sound instead. She spoke Dutch until it became incredibly unpoplar during World War I. I got used to it, it was always more important to understand what she was saying than how she said it.
Ruken, why are you being so snide about this? Those of us who maintain the wine-whine distinction aren’t generally running around trying to reverse the Great Vowel Shift, or bring back the lost preterite of “to go.”
I mean, I might do those things. For fun. But not the group of us in general.
We’re just speaking standard Modern English.
And you know what? It would be objectively better if the berry-bury and Mary-merry-marry mergers were undone (in those accents that have them). And I think the same is true of the wine-whine merger.
Again, language is a social and scientific technology. Making it more precise and with fewer homophones might diminish the fun of the pun–for some people who prefer perfect puns to near puns–but it probably would mostly speed up speech and improve accuracy.
And you know, I don’t have a college degree in linguistics. I don’t know if I wish I did. I was too stupid to look for a college that taught it when I had the chance. I enjoy linguistics on a layman’s level.
Descriptivist dogma has a lot to answer for, though.