In Wikipedia's efforts to agree on a way of transcribing English, many people find it hard to understand why the "voiceless w" sound [ʍ] (pronounced by many Scottish and American speakers in words like 'which', 'whine') is transcribed as /hw/. It is hard to explain the reason for this without giving a long explanation about the difference between phonetic and phonemic transcription - we can't expect everyone to find that easy to follow. The question has just come up again at the end of Help_talk:IPA_for_English and I have made an attempt to answer it.
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23/1/2015 12:05:16 am
The easiest explanation I have used is the analogy with /j/. If /h/ can be followed by /j/, when maybe /h/ can also be followed by /w/. So, if 'hue' is /hju:/, then by analogy 'why' should be /hwai/. But maybe that is too complicated to include in the Wikipedia page. Leave a Reply. |
A blog that discusses problems in Wikipedia's coverage of Phonetics
Emeritus Professor of Phonetics, Archives
June 2020
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