Of course this is a regional thing. All of the edge cases of English pronunciation will have regional variation; that’s what dialects are for.
First off, I’m from southern Illinois, but I spent much of my childhood in southeast Missouri. I suppose I have a vaguely Midwestern accent: I say ‘soda’ and not ‘pop’, I ‘wash’ instead of ‘warsh’, and my trees have ‘roots’ instead of ‘ruhts’. (Those examples of things I don’t say come from my grandmother, who has spent her whole life in western Montana.)
Anyway, I pronounce what and watt differently enough I can tell them apart without feeling for aspiration: They sound different to my ears, mainly because I use a different vowel sound. ‘What’ has an /a/ pronounced near the front of my mouth, whereas ‘watt’ has an /a/ pronounced higher up.
‘Which’ and ‘witch’ I can feel to be different, but I use the same vowel for each so I can’t hear the difference. Same with ‘why’/‘wye’ and all of the others.
I pronounce merry and marry differently, albeit not very, but marry and Mary are homophones in my dialect/accent. Pin and pen aren’t, though; not even close. Cot and caught are homophones, as are hock and hawk and horse and hoarse.
I’ve read that it’s not a part of any American dialect anymore, though you could almost call “elementary schoolteacher English” a dialect, given how drastically different it is from the way the rest of us speak. I have only ever heard it as a learned sound among people making an effort to be excruciatingly correct. I think it’s an affectation.
I wish I knew of a place that had good maps of American English dialects - where’s the isogloss between “mary = merry = marry” and “mary != merry != marry” dialects?
Data point: Chicago. I was definitely taught in grammar school that there was a difference, although I do not know of any Chicagoan who makes the distinction. I was taught that “wh” words like “What,” “why,” “where,” should be pronounced, roughly, “hwat,” “hwy,” and “hwere.” I’ve always associated this sound with Southern dialects.
[QUOTE=pulykamell]
Data point: Chicago. I was definitely taught in grammar school that there was a difference, although I do not know of any Chicagoan who makes the distinction. I was taught that “wh” words like “What,” “why,” “where,” should be pronounced, roughly, “hwat,” “hwy,” and “hwere.”
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I was taught this in Peterborough, Ontario, as well. But I don’t know anyone who actually pronounces it that way. I associate it with British people of my grandmother’s generation (birth 1890 to 1910 or so).
[QUOTE=AWB]
I remember in grade school one of my teachers drilling us on the proper pronounciation of words starting with “wh” (whale, what, whether). She’d have us practice pronouncing with our hand in front of our mouth; we were supposed to feel our breath when we’d pronounced it correctly.
Thing is, I always thought it sounded the same: what/watt, weather/whether, where/ware (sp).
So, is there really supposed to be a difference in how “wh” and “w” are pronounced?
(And don’t get me started on “who”, where you can’t even hear a “w” sound!)
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I wonder why anyone would waste time and money to produce an online dictionary with audible pronunciation features. :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=Excalibre]
I’ve read that it’s not a part of any American dialect anymore, though you could almost call “elementary schoolteacher English” a dialect, given how drastically different it is from the way the rest of us speak. I have only ever heard it as a learned sound among people making an effort to be excruciatingly correct. I think it’s an affectation.
I wish I knew of a place that had good maps of American English dialects - where’s the isogloss between “mary = merry = marry” and “mary != merry != marry” dialects?
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Ditto others on this thread: the w/wh distinction definitely is part of my (Dallas Region) dialect.
The aspiration in the wh, though, is quite soft, and easily drops out in many (maybe even most?) conversational contexts.
[QUOTE=Gymnopithys]
I’ve always wondered about these two:
stock and stalk
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Different. Stock has a short o. Stalk has an aw sound.
The same. I will say them differently to myself when making sure I type out the correct word, but they are pronounced the same, and Marriam-Webster agrees.
