wh "and" w的发音
if you listen closely to many Scottish people and peoplepeople of an older generation, you might hear \"wh\" words pronounced
with a \"h\" sound at the start. For them, the country of \"Wales\" and
the sea mammals \"whales\" would be pronounced slightly differently
with that small \"h\" sound at the beginning. For everyone else,
including anyone learning English today, \"Wales\" and \"whales\" sound
identical.
English used to have a \"hw\" sound and spelling that made a difference
compared to \"w\" words.
For example, \"hwat\" sounded different from \"Watt\" (the surname) and
were so spelled differently. Over time, however, the \"hw\" sound faded
but the \"hw\" spelling changed into \"wh\".
This is one more reason why English spelling reform (as the poster
Biscuits mentioned several days ago) is a bad idea for anyone interested
in the history of English. If we got rid of the \"wh\" spelling and
started writing \"wat\" for \"what\" then we would lose one more clue to
the history of the word.
On a technical note, the actual sound we're talking about (the one
that I've described as \"w\" with an initial \"h\" sound) is an unvoiced
version of , and if I could write proper IPA symbols in a newsgroup
I could show you what its symbol looks like, so instead I'll just say
that it looks like an upside-down \"w\".
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