Hacker News Reader

Comment by ithinkso | Hacker News Reader

That's interesting, could you elaborate on the difference in 'w' between 'wise' and 'when'? I'd say 'Wookash' as in star-wars 'Wookie' is a good way (way, hehe) to say Łukasz.

I'm not a linguist though so I'm curious

View on HN

That's a much better example! I'm not sure how to accurately describe the w/wh difference in text. A comment in this thread suggested that it's like prepending a "h", like "hwhen" which is actually incorrect - this exists but it's what you'd do as part of an over-the-top impression of an old fashioned upper class accent :) In reality the pronunciation is just like blowing a tiny little bit of air when your mouth makes the shape for the "w". I didn't know it was largely just a Scottish/Irish thing nowadays, though.

Also while we're all gathered in our shared appreciation of pronunciation weirdness I have one more "wh" example. Where I'm from (Northeast Scotland) English words following a "wh-" pattern are transformed in the local dialect to be spelled and pronounced differently as "f-". So "fit" instead of "what" ("fit like?" = "how's it going"), "far" instead of "where" ("far dae ye bide" = "where do you live") etc. Dialects are weird :)

Some English speakers pronounce "w" differently than "wh". They will say sth that sounds like "hwhen" instead of "when" for example. I think it's a dialect thing I only met like 5 people online who spoke like that but they were all native English speakers so it must be correct?

It’s “correct” but quite rare. The wh was originally a digraph pronounced with a voiceless labial–velar, but but most variants of English have undergone what linguists call the whine-wine merger so those words sound the same. Exceptions are Scots, Irish, and some Southern US varieties.

The guys I met are from Canada.

Obligatory Family Guy link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMopBpOfv_E

I'm not sure I've ever met anyone in real life who says "hwen", "hwere", etc., although you can hear it in some Johnny Cash songs. I'm not sure exactly where in America you can hear it - is it a southern thing? You'll never hear anyone say "hwen" in the UK.

IIRC the ‘History of English’ podcast mentions that pronunciation like ‘hwat’ was the norm either in Old English or before that. Then it changed, and the spelling was changed accordingly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com