Well, I hear a distinct difference – the aspiration is very clear.
Whales ask “When
Did Wales grow a wen?”
I don’t know why –
Wrong turn at a wye?
Virus or curse? Which?
Perhaps 'twas a witch.
It would spoil the “How do you get 2 whales in Mini Cooper?” joke.
Down the M4 and over the Severn Bridge since you asked
Little Britain Jimmm…and I claim my prize, whadoIget?
Try exhaling a little for ‘wh’.
Of course - when teaching pronunciation, don’t schools try to avoid local oddities as far as possible, and tend toward “standard English”, whatever that may be?
It’s notable that he’s only started affecting the difference in pronunciations since he’s been employed as a teacher - he said he was told specifically by other teachers to change his pronunciation of “whales”.
If they need a tissue to test whether you are pronouncing something correctly, does that not indicate the pronunciation difference is so subtle as to be meaningless?
Why? I’ve gotten along fine pronouncing them the same all my life, and it’s never been an issue. No more than confusing Wales with wails.
Different teachers have different opinions on this, and I suspect the general trend has been away from the prescriptive idea of a single ideal pronunciation.
I have never and would never ‘correct’ a child’s accent*, because of the value judgement this necessarily implies. And the idea that a teacher should change their own accent? 
I don’t have the strongest Suffolk accent by a long way, but when teaching I come out with local variants both of accent and of language, and don’t see why this should change. For example “didn’t” gets variously pronounced as “dint” or “dunt”, and I’ll use “do it” instead of “doesn’t it” and “go” for “goes”. Similarly, I have no problem with a child using dialect in informal speech - one which I have seen ‘corrected’ on numerous occassions is the use of the transitive ‘learn’ meaning ‘taught’, which actually comes from Old English and not from ignorance. Obviously it’s necessary for children to learn (or be learned 
) the differences between informal and formal language usage, both spoken and written, but that’s a different matter entirely. (Just because formal writing would never include “isn’t” isn’t a reason to avoid that abbreviation in other situations!)
As for actually telling another adult to change their accent…if I was on the receiving end of this, I’d regard it as unnecessary, unprofessional and simply insulting. And I’d tell them so.
- This is excepting, of course, aiding a child learning the pronunciation of words when English is not their first language. But if they’re picking up a local accent while doing so, no problem.
Nearly everyone in Scotland says “hwales”, nothing upper crust about that. I think 'wh" words were spelt ‘hw’ until Norman times. Then when the French speaking establishment started writing English, they thought ‘hw’ looked too weirdy foreign, so they changed it to ‘wh’.
FWIW, the guy who was corrected was Scottish, as well as the person correcting him (who needed telling about the “correct” pronunciation, himself).
Dictionaries show words like “white” starting phonetically [hw] but we Americans are too lazy. It seems the UK is keeping the distinction alive.
How did you come to this conclusion? (Scotland isn’t representative of Britain!)
This thread does indicate the difficulty of teaching homophones when accents come into play. My US Southern stepson had to identify some for his homework. He came up with “hell” and “hail”. Before I told him it was wrong, I had him pronounce them, and sure enough they were identical (and both two-syllable words).
Similarly, I was calling someone “Berry” for a while as that is what my wife told me was his name. Eventually, I thought this was a strange first name and asked her to pronounce “Berry” and “Barry”. Yep - identical.
Point taken.
I’d describe my own accent as educated Glasgow or something like that. I always distinguish between Wales and whales, and most folks I grew up around do the same.
Blimey, I know I was getting into a debatable area when suggesting ‘correcting’ pronunciation implies a value judgement, but ‘educated Glasgow’? What does that say about Glaswegians who don’t talk like that? 
Speak for yourself lobo! The folks I know could put out a candle aspirating the hw in white. But you don’t drop that h because you are lazy. There is no lazy accent. You pronounce it that way because others around you do.
I was also taught to pronounce the hw in whales and say it differently than Wales. I’ve heard that Prince Charles doesn’t like being called “the Prince of Whales.”
Accents consist of pronunciation and word choices. There is no such thing as “a generic American accents.”
If something has a subtle flavor, does it have no flavor? If a woman gives you a subtle smile, is it meaningless? Learn to appreciate that which is subtle.
This doesn’t mean that you have to say it “my way” to be right. Just be able to detect the difference.
GorillaMan, you and I disagree on what we would let the rascals in the classroom get away with. Informal English has its place. And when the students were talking among themselves, I didn’t correct them. I did expect them to use the basic grammar perscribed in their textbooks in papers they turned in. But I corrected them at an appropriate level of learning.
Descriptivist grammar is pure pleasure, but should be reserved for those who have mastered perscriptivism first. That way it means something when you are an enormously famous and gifted writer who splits an infinitive in the first sentence of your novel. Yes!
This is common in American speech, too. I will occasionally aspirate the “w,” and that’s how I was taught to pronounce such words growing up in Chicago. I wouldn’t say it’s the prevalent pronunciation by far, but I know enough people who do say something like “hw” for “wh” sounds that it doesn’t strike me as weird. So, if I’m enunciating clearly and speaking in a more formal dialect, I will pronounce “whales” as “hwales,” not “wales.”
Also, when I think of a stereotypical Southern accent, an exaggerated “HW” sound is standard, as in, “I’ll tell you hhhhwhat.”
Kind of along the same lines (seeing how people seem to be surprised about the “hw” pronunciation of “wh,”) I only recently found out that days of the week can be pronounced with a “dee” ending, as in “Sundee,” “Mondee,” etc. I thought it was the quirk of an older gentleman I know, but looking in the dictionary, it’s a listed pronunciation–in fact, it’s the first listed in American Heritage (but not the others I checked).
A big fat juicy faggot? 
Yeah, it’s an odd turn of phrase, I realise. Basically it gets applied to Glaswegians who don’t sound like Rab C Nesbitt.
The reason it’s described that way is that there is a fair degree of prejudice against strong Glaswegian accents - some people from more, er, enlightened parts of the UK take the accent as an indication of stupidity. Geordies, Scousers and Brummies will tell you the same thing. My accent is more “guy you’d hear when you call your 24-hour banking line”