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It might be interesting to look at the history of this cluster in other Germanic languages. Here's what I know, or think I know, anyhow:
Looks like this cluster got into trouble everywhere. Haukur ( talk) 22:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
“The pronunciation of this digraph as /ʍ/ is historically the oldest” I'm slightly in doubt, because as far as I know, ‘wh’ (or old ‘hw’ respectively) derives from PIE *kw, shifted to *xw and later to hw/hw. Maybe contemporary /hw/ is a re-invention? -- FAeR ( talk) 03:11, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
[excerpts from discussion at Wikipedia talk:IPA for English.]
Speaking as someone who uses /hw/ natively and non-self-consciously, [a 1] I must say (1) I have always intuitively felt it to be a consonant cluster, /h/ + /w/, not a single consonant, and (2) in my accent at least, it's a voiceless approximant, not a fricative, so if anything we should be transcribing it /w̥/, not /ʍ/. And speaking as a linguist with a fair amount of experience in the field of English dialectology, I must say I've never seen /ʍ/ proposed as a phoneme of English (as opposed to the surface realization of /hw/) anywhere but Wikipedia. Saying "I always thought using the symbol 'ʍ' was dumb" may not have been a particularly strong argument, but there are reasons behind it. — An gr 07:33, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The phonetic distinction between [w] and [ʍ] is voicing, and it highlights an additional phoneme rather than a phonologically irregular cluster. At a phonemic (broad) level it's more accurate. Given the triviality of a minimal phonetic difference between /hw/ and /ʍ/, shouldn't we defer to the phonemic level? Synchronism ( talk) 07:51, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
Goood work, Kwami, though I'm a little bit uncomfortable seeing my own OR repeated in the Phonology section. — An gr 08:53, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Ugh. Hasn't anyone done any acoustic research on this? Bob A ( talk) 19:22, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
Let me answer User:Angr, who says,
I've never seen /ʍ/ proposed as a phoneme of English (as opposed to the surface realization of /hw/) anywhere but Wikipedia.
The phoneme inventory can differ between varieties of English. Heinz Giegerich's excellent little book "English Phonology" accepts /ʍ/ as a phoneme in Scottish English. Indeed as a native speaker of Scottish Standard English and as a non-expert with undergraduate experience of linguistics, I have a very strong intuition that /ʍ/ is a phoneme in Scottish English, which is why I have queried the statement on the Article page that "speakers' intuition is that it is two consonants." Prim Ethics ( talk) 16:04, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
I suspect that w and wh have merged in the speech of most New Zealanders by now, but this is by no means universal. I pronounce them distinctly, with wh as a single sound, not a sequence of h and w. I have seen an article on the NZ wh in an academic magazine here. Among other things it drew attention to a fact I had never noticed, but realise is true in my own speech, namely that both sets of speakers pronounce "wharf" with an initial w. Koro Neil ( talk) 01:49, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
Could someone please post a map of the British Isles (including the Channel Islands, etc.) with the isogloss demarcated? Thanks, samwaltz ( talk) 15:04, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
The article starts with a mention of the digraph ‹wh› and later goes into the consonant cluster /hw/. Could there please be a small distinction made early on between the two. I find the closeness of wh to hw confusing. WikiParker ( talk) 22:52, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
Some original research to be sure but I have to take some exception with the U.S. map, though I have not looked up the reference.
I grew up in Houston, I live in Austin (TX), I have lived in California and Illinois, and my mother is from Florida. From my experience I do not believe the wine-whine distinction is as isolated as the map indicates. This distinction is certainly widespread in most of Texas, not just North Texas as the map seems to imply. My mother, though certainly from an older generation, has always had this distinction which raises questions about Florida. The merger is certainly prevalent in the upper Midwest from what I recall. But in California the distinction is still common.
It is true that some regions enunciate the distinction more fully than others but it seems misleading to imply that the distinction is all but gone in the others.
-- 97.231.148.19 ( talk) 22:16, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
According to Wiktionary, the <w> was added in ” whole” to differentiate it from ”hole” and is therefore not a case of this development. Which one is true? -- Lundgren8 ( t · c) 17:00, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
This sentence is insufficient: "In dialects which maintain the distinction, it is generally transcribed [ ʍ, and is equivalent to a voiceless [w̥] or [hw̥]." There is a disjunctive "or", and both exist, but there is no explanation of what they are or how they differ. After poking around, I discovered that the circles beneath the "w" in each one means it is voiceless. Naturally, I tried to pronounce each like I would normally but without voicing the "w" sound. And it turns out [w̥] sounds awfully h-like, but adding the actual "h" makes it sound exaggerated. Of course, not being a linguist, my attempt might be way off. I can't help but think it would be more reasonable if the article explained the difference between the sounds or pointed to somewhere that does. Is it not important in an article about the this sound to make it clear what sound (or sounds) it is? - Rrius ( talk) 09:42, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Any objection to changing the title of this article to something more user-friendly and representative, like Pronunciation of wh in English? W. P. Uzer ( talk) 10:16, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
I'm curious about the statements regarding the merger in the US, particularly as shown in the map. The map that is in the references does not seem to back this up, though the web site does state things have changed since that map was generated. Just as a personal observation, the merger does not seem to me as widespread as the article implies. Certainly the standard American accent, as reflected in television and film, maintains this distinction. Though it is fair to say that the distinction is fading, it is still quite prevalent in the most urban areas across the country, and is still recognized by most as proper speech, even if they do not consistently used it.
![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||
|
It might be interesting to look at the history of this cluster in other Germanic languages. Here's what I know, or think I know, anyhow:
Looks like this cluster got into trouble everywhere. Haukur ( talk) 22:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
“The pronunciation of this digraph as /ʍ/ is historically the oldest” I'm slightly in doubt, because as far as I know, ‘wh’ (or old ‘hw’ respectively) derives from PIE *kw, shifted to *xw and later to hw/hw. Maybe contemporary /hw/ is a re-invention? -- FAeR ( talk) 03:11, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
[excerpts from discussion at Wikipedia talk:IPA for English.]
Speaking as someone who uses /hw/ natively and non-self-consciously, [a 1] I must say (1) I have always intuitively felt it to be a consonant cluster, /h/ + /w/, not a single consonant, and (2) in my accent at least, it's a voiceless approximant, not a fricative, so if anything we should be transcribing it /w̥/, not /ʍ/. And speaking as a linguist with a fair amount of experience in the field of English dialectology, I must say I've never seen /ʍ/ proposed as a phoneme of English (as opposed to the surface realization of /hw/) anywhere but Wikipedia. Saying "I always thought using the symbol 'ʍ' was dumb" may not have been a particularly strong argument, but there are reasons behind it. — An gr 07:33, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The phonetic distinction between [w] and [ʍ] is voicing, and it highlights an additional phoneme rather than a phonologically irregular cluster. At a phonemic (broad) level it's more accurate. Given the triviality of a minimal phonetic difference between /hw/ and /ʍ/, shouldn't we defer to the phonemic level? Synchronism ( talk) 07:51, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
Goood work, Kwami, though I'm a little bit uncomfortable seeing my own OR repeated in the Phonology section. — An gr 08:53, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Ugh. Hasn't anyone done any acoustic research on this? Bob A ( talk) 19:22, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
Let me answer User:Angr, who says,
I've never seen /ʍ/ proposed as a phoneme of English (as opposed to the surface realization of /hw/) anywhere but Wikipedia.
The phoneme inventory can differ between varieties of English. Heinz Giegerich's excellent little book "English Phonology" accepts /ʍ/ as a phoneme in Scottish English. Indeed as a native speaker of Scottish Standard English and as a non-expert with undergraduate experience of linguistics, I have a very strong intuition that /ʍ/ is a phoneme in Scottish English, which is why I have queried the statement on the Article page that "speakers' intuition is that it is two consonants." Prim Ethics ( talk) 16:04, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
I suspect that w and wh have merged in the speech of most New Zealanders by now, but this is by no means universal. I pronounce them distinctly, with wh as a single sound, not a sequence of h and w. I have seen an article on the NZ wh in an academic magazine here. Among other things it drew attention to a fact I had never noticed, but realise is true in my own speech, namely that both sets of speakers pronounce "wharf" with an initial w. Koro Neil ( talk) 01:49, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
Could someone please post a map of the British Isles (including the Channel Islands, etc.) with the isogloss demarcated? Thanks, samwaltz ( talk) 15:04, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
The article starts with a mention of the digraph ‹wh› and later goes into the consonant cluster /hw/. Could there please be a small distinction made early on between the two. I find the closeness of wh to hw confusing. WikiParker ( talk) 22:52, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
Some original research to be sure but I have to take some exception with the U.S. map, though I have not looked up the reference.
I grew up in Houston, I live in Austin (TX), I have lived in California and Illinois, and my mother is from Florida. From my experience I do not believe the wine-whine distinction is as isolated as the map indicates. This distinction is certainly widespread in most of Texas, not just North Texas as the map seems to imply. My mother, though certainly from an older generation, has always had this distinction which raises questions about Florida. The merger is certainly prevalent in the upper Midwest from what I recall. But in California the distinction is still common.
It is true that some regions enunciate the distinction more fully than others but it seems misleading to imply that the distinction is all but gone in the others.
-- 97.231.148.19 ( talk) 22:16, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
According to Wiktionary, the <w> was added in ” whole” to differentiate it from ”hole” and is therefore not a case of this development. Which one is true? -- Lundgren8 ( t · c) 17:00, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
This sentence is insufficient: "In dialects which maintain the distinction, it is generally transcribed [ ʍ, and is equivalent to a voiceless [w̥] or [hw̥]." There is a disjunctive "or", and both exist, but there is no explanation of what they are or how they differ. After poking around, I discovered that the circles beneath the "w" in each one means it is voiceless. Naturally, I tried to pronounce each like I would normally but without voicing the "w" sound. And it turns out [w̥] sounds awfully h-like, but adding the actual "h" makes it sound exaggerated. Of course, not being a linguist, my attempt might be way off. I can't help but think it would be more reasonable if the article explained the difference between the sounds or pointed to somewhere that does. Is it not important in an article about the this sound to make it clear what sound (or sounds) it is? - Rrius ( talk) 09:42, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Any objection to changing the title of this article to something more user-friendly and representative, like Pronunciation of wh in English? W. P. Uzer ( talk) 10:16, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
I'm curious about the statements regarding the merger in the US, particularly as shown in the map. The map that is in the references does not seem to back this up, though the web site does state things have changed since that map was generated. Just as a personal observation, the merger does not seem to me as widespread as the article implies. Certainly the standard American accent, as reflected in television and film, maintains this distinction. Though it is fair to say that the distinction is fading, it is still quite prevalent in the most urban areas across the country, and is still recognized by most as proper speech, even if they do not consistently used it.