Do you pronounce the 'h' in words such as 'whip' and 'while' ?

[TheTecknician]

If you do, hwy ?

Seriously, this is something I've noticed in people's speech as I've got older. I'm fairly sure I was taught at school that the 'h' in these and other words was silent but maybe it's not necessarily so. Perhaps it's a matter of regional pronunciation or dialect.

Stevie Griffin says 'coolhwip' in Family Guy.

Here is a Scottish accent that you do not have to imagine.

Outwith and outside are different.

Outwith is Outwith the terms / remit of a contract or someone's powers.

Outside is outdoors. Outside the house not inside the house.

Sorry, I was being silly. These are archaic Scots spellings. Though they do show that the sound comes before the -w and can have an edge.

Scotland has varying accents.
Glasgow & West, Edinburgh & East
Aberdeen & Highland
The islands seem to have a very soft accent especially compared to Glasgow

But I definitely pronounce where,

Wh is a sound and it was taught at the same time as Ch, and Sh
But no where did they explain church & lurch are the same but loch & bach are completely different - your just supposed to know 🤔

I actually can't figure out how people manage to say white without the h or the h infront of the w

There are many different Glaswegian Scottish accents in Glasgow...
And Scotland is even more varied...
In Doric areas in north-east Scotland, you may hear f- instead of hw- or w- in wh- words.

Me sat here at 2:30am doing a night feed, whispering all the words mentioned here to try and pronounce a ‘h’ haha

Thats not an oddity though. Those are English words, of which Scottish people have many oddities in how they speak them.

This is making me think of “Hwarm Hwhite” lights and “Hwhite Hwine” in King Gary. It’s so NOT a feature of the South and East London accents that it seems laughably aspirational to adopt it.
Definitely a thing amount my Scottish family, however.
Lived in West and South London all my life and we generally swallow our Hs.

You just say wite. It rhymes with bite.
*You're. (You are)

I'm Irish and wouldn't even know how to pronounce the H in those words 😅

I can’t hear any difference between them

i wouldn pronounce the h in whip and csnt imagine how it’s possible 😁. Do people say w-hip. Like a two syllable word?

I really try to emphasise the h sound in those words when I'm at work, because I'm a TA in a primary (in East Anglia) and trying to help children with their spellings.

With the whats, whens, and wheres I channel my inner Giles Brandreth and get them to listen really hard.
Other words that are accent dependent I try to given an example, eg. any/many- we say en-ee/men-ee round here, but it is pronounced an-ee/man-ee in Ireland.
(Based on one accent that I've heard on a podcast- After Dark.) Telling the children does help them spell correctly.

We've got some wonderful accents in Norfolk and Suffolk. DH is born and bred round here, but the examples I can think of add letters - slightly - sloightly. It's a gentle, unhurried way of speaking. Mostly it's the older generation with the broadest accent (MIL), I don't hear any children speaking like that.

I pronounce which and witch differently but definitely don’t sound the “h” before the”w”. That would just sound weird to me. “ wh” just involves more effort and lip movement than “w” which is a lazier sound with less airflow. More like “ hitch” with the “h” at the beginning just quietly sounded and a “w” before it but the 2 consonants sounded together not separately, also the “t” not sounded as “ch” is different to”tch”

Try blowing out and saying 'witch' you will be somewhere near. I do think it is more to do with accents because they are words we hear before we learn to read.

How can w and wh have same sound
c and ch
t and th

w is wu
wh is whu

i spose you get away with it as there is no word wot (what)

They're pronounced the same, when you type 'pronounce witch' or which into google it will play the British pronunciation and also says they both sound like 'wich'.

You mean the English pronunciation or southern English pronunciation as it is wh in Scotland for which

There’s a fancy linguistic word for this, which is basically about our speech getting lazier with time. It’s the same word for the ‘yu’ sound rather than ‘oo’ in suit.
Suit was once syoot
Tuesday as Tyoosday rather than chooseday.
Soldyer rather than soljer

All very much present in the late Queen!

I still do some of the older sounds- Tyoosday, hwich, hwen etc.
But I don’t do hwoo. Merely ‘hoo’. 🤣

@pitterypattery00 what difference is there in hoarse and horse? I can’t get that one!

Thats interesting because I hear people from the rural home counties, south of London (so Kent, Surrey, Sussex) using outwith. It sounds strange to me from London

I’m Scottish born and grew up there on the East Coast, been in Yorkshire for over 50 years, but still pronounce which and witch, where and wear differently. Most of the time I’m used to people not making the ‘wh’ sound, but wharf really grates when it’s pronounced as warf. I don’t know why as it’s not a word I hear often.

The ‘wh’ sound has been replaced in standard southern English over the past 50 years by ‘w’ (the h has been removed). I’ve noticed the ‘wh’ sound is almost an ‘h’ in e.g. the Western Isles of Scotland.

They didn’t used to be. Many people still don’t.
I’ve had compliments on my ‘wh’ pronunciation 🤣 Which I obviously was confused about as it’s my normal. Couldn’t understand what she was talking about at first.

Yes, sometimes. Whom for example, or where. But I grew up in the southwest and adopted an Estuary English accent when I moved to the southeast in my teens to fit in, so I’m a bit of a mongrel.

I am sitting here trying to pronounce the h and as hard as I try, I can't!

@PrizedPickledPopcorn

I would pronounce hoarse with an ‘o’ sound, as in force, but horse with an ‘aw’ sound, to rhyme with gorse. But worse rhymes with curse, nurse and purse.