At 5:39 PM -0400 7/7/05, Andrew Stiller wrote:
In Broadcast Standard American, w and wh are pronounced identically,
and the phoneme [hw] simply does not exist.
I'm not sure whether you are referring to a reference book, or just
to general practice. I do know that I grew up having been taught to
differentiate between the two by a mother who besides being a fine
theory teacher was an equally fine choral conductor, and I still draw
the distinction between the two and so train my own choral ensembles.
I might mention that in the early days of radio and the national
networks, the networks turned to the west coast, from Washington
State to California, to find announcers with neutral, non-dialectal
pronunciation so as not to offend anyone. Quite a few of my parents'
college buddies from the 1920s (at Washington State) ended up in
broadcasting for that very reason.
Even in British RP [hw] is not universal. Gilbert and Sullivan's
"Never mind the why and wherefore" is almost unsingable if you
insist on rendering the Hs, and I know of no recording in which that
is done.
Funny, I just tried it and had no problem.
We all understand that the English language is constantly changing.
This just happens to be a change I don't care for because it creates
homonyms, and therefore potential confusion, where they needn't be,
and no amount of appeal to authority will change that.
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
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