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Post by Little Jack Horner on Aug 25, 2022 18:57:29 GMT
This is probably only of interest to me but I have recently become interested in the origins of the interrogative WH words such as where, which and when. When I was a boy I was always told that the correct pronunciation was to reverse the W and the H and, therefore, say hwere, hwich and hwen. Admittedly the H was hardly to be pronounced and I only used it when I was being careful. I now discover, after more than 80 years that my pronunciation is regarded as non-standard in most of the English speaking world and, indeed, is regarded as dialectal and more or less restricted to Scotland, Ireland and the south-east of the USA.
Apparently my pronunciation derives from ancient times. Goodness me! I am even more old-fashioned than I thought. The change from HW to a simple W is known to linguists as the wine–whine merger.
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Post by Dave Miller on Aug 25, 2022 21:33:49 GMT
A good friend from school went off to Aberdeen to University and on our next meeting up told me how the Aberdonians pronounced the “wh~” of question words as “f”. Fie did you do that? Fair did he go? Fen was that? And so on.
I didn’t much believe him, but three years later visited him in Aberdeen. And, gosh, he was right!
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Aug 26, 2022 15:03:58 GMT
I am not sure whether this has anything to do with the subject under discussion but Dave Miller has mentioned the pronunciation of WH in Aberdonian dialect as being F. Very strange! But, many years ago, my wife and I toured in New Zealand and visited the Whakarewarewa geothermal area associated with Rotorua. I was intrigued to be told that the WH of Whakarewarewa is pronounced as F. I have subsequently confirmed this online. I assume that the name is Maori and that it was so-called long before it was transcribed into modern English. I just wonder whether it was so transcribed by an Aberdonian?
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