And why is the W silent anyways?

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
    47·
    13 days ago

    The ⟨W⟩ is silent now, but it wasn’t until 1500 or so. Back then the word was pronounced /two:/; it would almost rhyme with contemporary “toe”. But then that /o:/ became /u:/ (the modern pronunciation), due to the Great Vowel Shift, and since /w/ and /u/ are really similar they fused together.

    @FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world mentioned that in a few associated words that ⟨W⟩ letter still represents an actual /w/ phoneme, note how the following vowel is different - that blocked the “fusion”.

    • palordrolap@fedia.io
      4·
      12 days ago

      I thought it was the ‘w’ that had made the sound all along, perhaps modified by the ‘o’. The ‘o’ then became a schwa or an unnecessary similar sound and was then dropped as redundant. “hwo” followed the same development, but we spell that “who” these days.

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
        3·
        12 days ago

        We know that the modern /u:/ is not from that old /w/ because other words followed the same change - even words without /w/, like “moon”, “poop” (yup) or “boot”. In fact it’s how the digraph ⟨oo⟩ became associated with the sound.

        The case of “hwo”→“who” is a bit more complicated. As you said the “wh” digraph used to be “hw”; the change happened in Early Modern times, and it was likely for readability - less sequential short strokes = easier to read. People around those times did other weird stuff like respelling “u” as “o”, as in the word “luue”→“loue” (modern “love”), for the same reason.

        However, later on that /hw/ sequence of phonemes started merging into a single sound, [ʍ]: like [w] you round your lips to pronounce it, but like [h] you don’t vibrate your vocal folds. And if that [ʍ] happened before a rounded vowel - like [o:] or similar - it was reanalysed as a plain /h/. So for words like “who”, it’s like the “w” was dropped, just like in “two”, but in a really roundabout way.

        And, before non-rounded vowels, that [ʍ] still survives in plenty dialects; for example, “when” as either [ʍɛn] or [wɛn]. This change is recent enough that you still have some speakers in NZ and USA who use [ʍ].

        • palordrolap@fedia.io
          2·
          12 days ago

          I guess my confusion comes from the fact I’m from a place that only within the last 100 years or so has all but lost the original “hw” in “correct” speech, except in “who”, and I was thinking that the ‘w’ had to have been preserved, especially if the ‘h’ was.

          There’s also that the ‘w’ hasn’t vanished in “twenty” (or “twain”, etc.).

          • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
            1·
            12 days ago

            No worries - plus the whole thing is damn counter-intuitive, both “sounds fusing together but still conveying two phonemes” and “that sound was analysed as one phoneme, now as another” are kind of weird.

  • 667@lemmy.radioEnglish
    8·
    12 days ago

    Wait until you learn about words starting with a silent p, like pterodactyl and ptoilet.

  • bstix@feddit.dk
    5·
    13 days ago

    It is sometimes done in German. The word is Zwei, but it’s somewhat common to say Zwo instead for clarity. The w is pronounced.

    I guess the" tw" sound isn’t used as frequently in English. It happens in between.

      • chtk@feddit.nl
        6·
        13 days ago

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    • over_clox@lemmy.worldOP
      13·
      13 days ago

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  • Aksamit@slrpnk.net
    1·
    12 days ago

    That’s going to morph into ‘dva’ hella fast as that ‘t’ is clunky to pronounce.

  • otp@sh.itjust.works
    12·
    12 days ago

    Without the silent W, it’s just “to”, which sounds exactly the same as “two”