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.

watch from 3.18, always pronounce "H" @TheTecknician 😀

I pronounce wine and whine the same. Both pronounced “wine”.

Who i pronounce like “hoo”.

so I guess the h is pronounced, not the w.

So would you hear any difference at all between wile and while? The w sound and the wh sound are identical to you?

Yes, they are the same.

I am trying the technique mentioned above of putting my hand in front of mouth and feeling if I blow out on either of them.

i thought perhaps I could a little bit on whales, not not Wales, but it’s very slight, or I’m possibly imagining it.

These sounds really are all the same for me.

The only reason I’m bothered is that I’m Scottish and the consensus seem to be that they are very different in Scottish accent! But I have genuinely only ever known which and witch to sound exactly the same.

They all sound like paw, for some of us. We don’t roll the r, so pore/pour is paw. And moor/poor the same as well. Just the one syllable poor/pore the same.

It probably depends on where you are exactly.
I’ve heard that wh is said like f around Aberdeen.

Rolling an r is not the same as pronouncing an r. It’s just one way of pronouncing it.
Many rhotic speakers pronounce their r’s without rolling them.

Ah, ok. I tend to use ‘rolling’ for pronouncing the r. As a non r person, if I can hear the r it feels like it’s been rolled! I do know rolling is the trill, though,

I've become ridiculously fascinated with phonetics since I started to learn a foreign language (Portuguese) and realised (which now sounds stupid) that there were so many different ways of pronouncing letters. I'd just never really thought about it before but now I really listen for it and the difference between eg the English pronunciation of Portugal - por chew gal and the Portuguese pronunciation por too gal because we pronounce our u differently.

its also got me thinking about English words like rough tough dough - the first 2 rhyme but the 3rd doesn't even though the ending in all three is the same

Yes, I’ve noticed it before, that people sometimes use ‘rolling the r’ to mean simply pronouncing the r’s as those with rhotic accents do. But they’re not the same. Most Americans have rhotic accents, but generally don’t roll their r’s for example. You will hear rolled r’s in Scotland but it depends on the word and on the accent /speaker too.

I’m not bad at accents, have a good ear and can mimic sounds fairly easily. The embarrassment of me attempting a rhotic r or a rolled r though, @Inspirel !
It involves funny breathing, face pulling and veers into horse impressions. It just doesn’t come naturally and is so effortful for me.
This may or may not have been happening this morning in the privacy of my bedroom 😅

https://www-nytimes-com.translate.goog/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

😂😂 I’m a useless mimic personally. I don’t think I have an ‘ear’ for languages though I find them really interesting.

In non-rhotic accents the r isn’t pronounced in some word positions, but it does change how the vowel is pronounced. So if you’re trying to do an accent which pronounces the r you often have to remember to change the vowel sounds as well.

Listen to the vowel in car in this Irish accent for example, and how it differs from the non-rhotic English accents. It’s not just the r you have to change.

https://forvo.com/word/car/

(Not all Irish accents pronounce the vowel in car like that though. It’s different in some Dublin accents for example.)

I’m in the west end of Glasgow.

Just googlling here and the distinction is found in Glasgow apparently, though less so among younger speakers. So maybe it depends on your age? It might be interesting to check with friends and family to see if any of them pronounce wine/whine and witch/which differently 😁

I've just been saying all the word pairs mentioned aloud (thankfully I'm alone!) and while I still can't figure out if I do say the h in any of them, I can tell you my mouth shape is different for each of the words in a pair. So clearly I'm doing something different, just can't hear it!!

No, but someone very close to me pronounces the p in 'raspberry' and genuinely thinks this is acceptable to the point they correct everyone every time we see or hear the damn word and it makes me want to do very unladylike things to them but you didn't ask that question and now I've made myself mad hence no punctuation.

Ha ha this made me laugh - this is exactly what happens when I try to mimic my partner's South English accent 😂. I have to pull my mouth into weird shapes - I look and sound ridiculous!

I wouldn't exactly people around Aberdeen pronounce wh as f but whereas southern Scottish people might say whit/whaur for what and where, we'd say fir/far but it's only in Scottish words.

I don't roll my Rs but do pronounce them so I wouldn't say Aberrrrdeen but Abrdeen if that makes sense.

@ItsJustMeMyself I too pronounce the p in raspberry.
Interestingly when we were on holiday abroad my son wanted a raspberry milkshake. English XH pronounced it as rasbri and the girl had no idea what he meant. I said rasp-berry and she understood 😀

Yes, this person had an RP English accent, but I'm wondering having read this thread whether she had a scottish background..

I've just done this and it locates me to West Scotland - I'm from near Glasgow originally (but have lived in England for many years). So pretty accurate for me.

I pronounce the p in raspberry. It kind of replaces the b. How do you pronounce it without?

Thanks @RaraRachael, that’s interesting about the f sound.
I saw this map, but it was prepared with data from the end of the 19th century so I was curious about how much things had changed.

Do they also pronounce chocolate with three syllables?

I quite like the idea of (slightly) hearing the p in raspberry but telling people off rather than simply leading by example is rather insufferable.

Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd break into a distillery.

'is this whiskey?' asks Bugs.

'yes' says Elmer. 'But not as whiskey as wobbing a bank'.

Don't think either of them are Scottish 🤣