pronounced as /notice/The pronunciation of the digraph (wh) in English has changed over time, and still varies today between different regions and accents. It is now most commonly pronounced pronounced as //w//, the same as a plain initial (w), although some dialects, particularly those of Scotland, Ireland, and the Southern United States, retain the traditional pronunciation pronounced as //hw//, generally realized as pronounced as /link/, a voiceless "w" sound. The process by which the historical pronounced as //hw// has become pronounced as //w// in most modern varieties of English is called the wine–whine merger. It is also referred to as glide cluster reduction.
Before rounded vowels, a different reduction process took place in Middle English, as a result of which the (wh) in words like who and whom is now pronounced pronounced as //h//. (A similar sound change occurred earlier in the word how.)
What is now English (wh) originated as the Proto-Indo-European consonant *kʷ (whose reflexes came to be written (qu) in Latin and the Romance languages). In the Germanic languages, in accordance with Grimm's Law, Indo-European voiceless stops became voiceless fricatives in most environments. Thus the labialized velar stop *kʷ initially became presumably a labialized velar fricative *xʷ in pre-Proto-Germanic, then probably becoming pronounced as /
Because Proto-Indo-European interrogative words typically began with *kʷ, English interrogative words (such as who, which, what, when, where) typically begin with (wh) (for the word how, see below). As a result, such words are often called wh-words, and questions formed from them are called wh-questions. In reference to this English order, a common cross-lingual grammatical phenomenon affecting interrogative words is called wh-movement.
Before rounded vowels, such as pronounced as //uː// or pronounced as //oː//, there was a tendency, beginning in the Old English period, for the sound pronounced as //h// to become labialized, causing it to sound like pronounced as //hw//. Words with an established pronounced as //hw// in that position came to be perceived (and spelt) as beginning with plain pronounced as //h//. This occurred with the interrogative word how (Proto-Germanic *hwō, Old English hū).
A similar process of labialization of pronounced as //h// before rounded vowels occurred in the Middle English period, around the 15th century, in some dialects. Some words which historically began with pronounced as //h// came to be written (wh) (whole, whore). Later in many dialects pronounced as //hw// was delabialized to pronounced as //h// in the same environment, regardless of whether the historic pronunciation was pronounced as //h// or pronounced as //hw// (in some other dialects the labialized pronounced as //h// was reduced instead to pronounced as //w//, leading to such pronunciations as the traditional Kentish pronounced as //woʊm// for home). This process affected the pronoun who and its inflected forms. These had escaped the earlier reduction to pronounced as //h// because they had unrounded vowels in Old English, but by Middle English the vowel had become rounded, and so the pronounced as //hw// of these words was now subject to delabialization:
By contrast with how, these words changed after their spelling with (wh) had become established, and thus continue to be written with (wh) like the other interrogative words which, what, etc. (which were not affected by the above changes since they had unrounded vowels – the vowel of what became rounded at a later time).
The wine–whine merger is the phonological merger by which pronounced as //hw//, historically realized as a voiceless labio-velar approximant [ʍ], comes to be pronounced the same as plain pronounced as //w//, that is, as a voiced labio-velar approximant pronounced as /[w]/. John C. Wells refers to this process as Glide Cluster Reduction.[1] It causes the distinction to be lost between the pronunciation of (wh) and that of (w), so pairs of words like wine/whine, wet/whet, weather/whether, wail/whale, Wales/whales, wear/where, witch/which become homophones. This merger has taken place in the dialects of the great majority of English speakers.
The merger seems to have been present in the south of England as early as the 13th century.[2] It was unacceptable in educated speech until the late 18th century, but there is no longer generally any stigma attached to either pronunciation. In the late nineteenth century, Alexander John Ellis found that pronounced as //hw// was retained in all wh- words throughout Cumbria, Northumberland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, but the distinction was largely absent throughout the rest of England.[3]
The merger is essentially complete in England, Wales, the West Indies, South Africa, Australia, and in the speech of young speakers in New Zealand. However, some conservative RP speakers in England may use pronounced as //hw// for (wh), a conscious choice rather than a natural feature of their accent.
The merger is not found in Scotland, most of Ireland (although the distinction is usually lost in Belfast and some other urban areas of Northern Ireland),[4] and in the speech of older speakers in New Zealand. The distribution of the wh- sound in words does not always exactly match the standard spelling; for example, Scots pronounce whelk with plain pronounced as //w//, while in many regions weasel has the wh- sound.
Most speakers in the United States and Canada have the merger. According to Labov, Ash, and Boberg (2006: 49), using data collected in the 1990s, there are regions of the U.S. (particularly in the Southeast) in which speakers keeping the distinction are about as numerous as those having the merger, but there are no regions in which the preservation of the distinction is predominant (see map). Throughout the U.S. and Canada, about 83% of respondents in the survey had the merger completely, while about 17% preserved at least some trace of the distinction.
Below is a list of word pairs that are likely to be pronounced as homophones by speakers having the wine–whine merger.
| wack | whack | pronounced as /ˈwæk/ | ||
| wail | whale | pronounced as /ˈweɪl/ | With pane–pain merger | |
| wale | whale | pronounced as /ˈweɪl, ˈweːl/ | ||
| Wales | whales | pronounced as /ˈweɪlz, ˈweːlz/ | ||
| wang | whang | pronounced as /ˈwæŋ/ | ||
| ware | where | pronounced as /ˈwɛː(r), ˈweːr/ | ||
| wary | wherry | pronounced as /ˈwɛri/ | With Mary-marry-merry merger | |
| watt | what | pronounced as /ˈwɒt/ | In certain dialects | |
| way | whey | pronounced as /ˈweɪ/ | ||
| weal | wheel | pronounced as /ˈwiːl/ | ||
| wear | where | pronounced as /ˈwɛː(r), ˈweːr/ | ||
| weather | whether | pronounced as /ˈwɛðə(r)/ | ||
| weigh | whey | pronounced as /ˈweɪ/ | With wait–weight merger | |
| we'll | wheel | pronounced as /ˈwiːl/ | In certain dialects | |
| welp | whelp | pronounced as /ˈwɛlp/ | ||
| wen | when | pronounced as /ˈwɛn/ | ||
| were (man) | where | pronounced as /ˈwɛː(r), ˈweːr/ | ||
| were (to be) | whir | pronounced as /ˈwɜː(r)/ | ||
| wet | whet | pronounced as /ˈwɛt/ | ||
| wether | whether | pronounced as /ˈwɛðə(r)/ | ||
| wide | why'd | pronounced as /ˈwaɪd/ | ||
| wield | wheeled | pronounced as /ˈwiːld/ | ||
| wig | whig | pronounced as /ˈwɪɡ/ | ||
| wight | white | pronounced as /ˈwaɪt/ | ||
| wile | while | pronounced as /ˈwaɪl/ | In certain dialects | |
| win | when | pronounced as /ˈwɪn/ | With pin-pen merger | |
| win | whin | pronounced as /ˈwɪn/ | ||
| wince | whence | pronounced as /ˈwɪns/ | With pin-pen merger | |
| wind (verb) | whined | pronounced as /ˈwaɪnd/ | ||
| wine | whine | pronounced as /ˈwaɪn/ | ||
| wined | whined | pronounced as /ˈwaɪnd/ | ||
| wire | why're | pronounced as /ˈwaɪə(r)/ | ||
| wise | why's | pronounced as /ˈwaɪz/ | ||
| wish | whish | pronounced as /ˈwɪʃ/ | ||
| wit | whit | pronounced as /ˈwɪt/ | ||
| witch | which | pronounced as /ˈwɪtʃ/ | ||
| wither | whither | pronounced as /ˈwɪðə(r)/ | ||
| woe | whoa | pronounced as /ˈwoʊ, ˈwoː/ | ||
| word | whirred | pronounced as /ˈwɜː(r)d/ | With nurse merger | |
| world | whirled | pronounced as /ˈwɜː(r)ld/ | With nurse merger | |
| world | whorled | pronounced as /ˈwɜː(r)ld/ | In certain dialects | |
| Y; wye | why | pronounced as /ˈwaɪ/ |
In some dialects of Scots, the sequence pronounced as //hw// has merged with the voiceless labiodental fricative pronounced as //f//.[7] Thus whit ("what") is pronounced pronounced as //fɪt//, whan ("when") becomes pronounced as //fan//, and whine becomes pronounced as //fain// (a homophone of fine). This is also found in some Irish English with an Irish Gaelic substrate influence (which has led to a re-borrowing of whisk(e)y as Irish Gaelic Irish: fuisce, the word having originally entered English from Scottish Gaelic).
Phonologically, the distinct sound of (wh) is often analyzed as the consonant cluster pronounced as //hw//, and it is transcribed so in most dictionaries. When it has the pronunciation pronounced as /[ʍ]/, however, it may also be analyzed as a single phoneme,