Why is there the "wh"

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. :wink:

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?

What you read was wrong. It’s my own dialect.

To me, caught rhymes with ought, cot, and not. I don’t hear or say a difference.

There are?

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.

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).

I wonder why anyone would waste time and money to produce an online dictionary with audible pronunciation features. :rolleyes:

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.

-FrL-

I’ve always wondered about these two:

stock and stalk

compliment and complement

Those have distinct pronunciations in my southern US dialect.

Can’t hear a difference here, though.

For me, the first pair are pronounced differently, while the second are pronounced the same.

However, I have probably never actually said “complement” out loud in my entire life.

-FrL-

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.