"Wh" /hw/ is normally pronounced as a
voiceless (velarised) bilabial or labiovelar fricative in Scots,
Scottish English, Irish English and non-urban Ulster English. In all varieties
of English there are people who for one reason or another use the /hw/
pronunciation (more often in the major lexical categories than in "wh" pronouns)
and believe it to be more euphonious or, say, more sophisticated. What's
really curious is that the initial clusters /hr-/, /hn-/ and /hl-/ lost their
aitches already in early Middle English, while /hw-/ has somehow managed to
survive. Meanwhile, English has developed the phonologically parallel sequence
/hj-/ (/hju:-/ < /hiu-/, as in "hew, huge").
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 6:33 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Unvoiced [j]?
In a message dated 9/4/2002 5:44:03 AM
Eastern Standard Time, haha2581@... writes:
Is there an unvoiced counterpart to [w] aswell?
There is said to be one in English, the
sound represented by the "wh" at the beginning of word such as "wheel," but
many, if not most, Americans simply voice it. How is it with other
dialects of English?
David Fickett-Wilbar