At 5:47 PM -0400 10/20/06, David W. Fenton wrote:
I remember being taught that words beginning with "wh" where to be pronounced "hw" but I have never heard anyone that I could say was definitely doing that. What I hear instead is not two distinct letters, each pronounced clearly, but a sound that is different from either of the two letters alone, just as "th" has a sound different as a pair from either of the two letters in it.
As taught by my mother to her choirs (and to me), the initial sound is NOT that of an "h" produced as an unvoiced fricative at the back of the tongue, but the sound of the unvoiced fricative produced by blowing through the pursed lips (as if trying to blow out a candle). I don't know what to call that sound, although there is probably an IPA symbol for it. It melds right into the voiced "w" phoneme.
If this is NOT done, "why" comes out as "wy," "what" comes out as "watt," and "whoa" comes out as "woe." And yes, I know that some people actually do pronounce them that way, but according to what I was taught it is incorrect to do so.
So, no, I wouldn't see "wh" as an example of pronunciation where the letters are reversed at all.
SOMETHING is reversed, but the phoneme is changed because the proper sound is NOT an "h."
Some languages may have very clearcut pronunciation rules. English is not one of them, and never has been!
John -- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
