Has anyone noticed that a lot of adult students in Taiwan who have been through the English education system here pronounce words such as ‘what, where, why and when’ as ‘hwhat, hwhere, hwhy and hwhen’?
According to Wikipedia this pronunciation is only still used in Scotland, Ireland and this area of the USA:
Will students fail if they use ‘what, where and why’ instead of ‘hwhat, hwhere and hwhy’ at school in Taiwan?
When I came across this I told the student that these words weren’t spoken like this in England, however I let him carry on using it. I think that this was the best thing to do.
The explanation is actually [quote]The area marked in purple on this map of the southeastern United States denotes the area in which the contrast between the pronunciation of /hw/ and the pronunciation of /w/ is greatest. In most other areas of the United States, the pronunciations have merged to a greater extent.[/quote]
Some Canadians pronounce the h, and not just geriatrics or Scottish/Irish immigrants. I’ve noticed it among Taiwanese children and have never corrected them because… it’s not actually wrong.
Some Mandarin speakers do the h to f thing subconsciously. I’ve even caught myself doing it occasionally.
I’ve never heard Taiwanese pronounce ‘wh’ words like ‘hwh’, but I know it’s something that comes up with some Americans and their regionalisms. Never heard a Canadian do it however, contrary to what someone else was suggesting.
It comes from Old English. You hear it more in the far north of England and in Scotland. Many of my family use ‘hw’, but it’s not really found as far south as Manchester where I’m sorta from.
Youse can see it all through ‘Beowulf’. The first word, in fact, is ‘Hwæt!’ which is now ‘what’ which here means ‘Yo!’
It died out for various reasons, but there are vestiges in places where the Norman invasion and occupation didn’t reach, as well as in modern spelling. It’s also more prevalent in places with Icelandic migration, so you get ‘hvat’ rather than ‘hwæt’ which seems to have been more resilient.
Yup. It dates back to Proto-Indo-European kw-. (Latin quid = English what). Through Grimm’s Law it became hw- in Germanic. It died out early on in German and Dutch (where it’s w-), and later in Scandinavia (where its vestiges can be seen in the spelling hv-). It persisted longer in English as wh-. But it’s disappearing now, becoming w-.
Please explain the “physics” of this over compensation. I just ask students to try to just ignore the “h” and treat it as a regular “W” sound. Many have done it. Some will never change, but I’ve never seen the “f” compensation.
Just curious, do people who say “wen” for when also say “wich” for which? I personally say “wen” and “which”.
There were no /v/ and /f/ sounds in Old Chinese and Early Middle Chinese. The phonology of Taigi (Taiwanese Holo) is pretty close to Old and Early Middle Chinese, and as such Taigi does not have those sounds.
So it’s highly unlikely that the ‘fwu’ sound is of Taigi influence, and unless you come in contact with many Hakka, since Hakka speaking people is a small minority, Hakka is also unlikely to be the cause of a wide spread ‘fwu’ phenomenon.
That leaves Taiwan’s Mandarin speakers, whose counter parts in Northern China just can’t leave the initial sound /w/ alone and feel the need to butcher it to a /v/ sound. I think that’s what’s happening to the ‘fwu’ hyper correction.
Come to think of it, if they say it like /ven/, then they probably should learn German instead, at least they got the pronunciation of wenn down.
![https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_English_⟨wh⟩#/media/File:Hw-w_merger.svg[/wikipedia]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_English_%E2%9F%A8wh%E2%9F%A9#/media/File:Hw-w_merger.svg%5B/wikipedia%5D){kind=link}