Brainstorming about history, politics, literature, religion, and other topics from a 'gypsy' scholar on a wagon hitched to a star.
Glass EyesI need some new glass eyes.
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 7:46 AM
7 comments
I am a retired professor. I last taught at Ewha Womans University, mostly composition, research writing, and cultural issues, but also the occasional graduate seminar on Gnosticism and Johannine theology and the occasional undergraduate course on European history. My doctorate is in history (U.C. Berkeley), with emphasis on religion and science. My thesis is on John's gospel and Gnosticism. I'm also an award-winning writer, and I recommend my novella, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, to anyone interested. I'm originally from the Arkansas Ozarks, but my academic career -- funded through doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships (e.g., Fulbright, Naumann, Lady Davis) -- has taken me through Texas, California, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, and Israel and has landed me in Seoul, South Korea. I've also traveled to Mexico, visited much of Europe, including Moscow, and touched down briefly in a few East Asian countries. Hence: "Gypsy Scholar."
7 Comments:
I've always thought that the pronunciation of "wh" as "hw" was a dialectal thing—specifically, a country dialect. (I think you can hear Dr. McCoy, who's supposed to be a country doctor, pronounce "whales" as "hwales" in "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.")
An amusing, non-country take on the "wh/hw" question is here.
I'm from the northern Virginia area, where "whale" is pronounced "wale." Same for "why."
(By which I don't mean that "why" is pronounced "wale.")
The aspirated "why" always seemed to me to express an actual question, whereas the non-aspirated "why" seemed to imply a nuance of "because" and almost as if the answer were obvious, but as with many of my notions, I might be simply imagining stuff.
Jeffery Hodges
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Interesting! I've never heard (or read) that before. Then again, my ignorance is boundless, so that shouldn't be surprising. Well, at least I now have a new topic to research.
Your point about dialect probably identifies the answer. The meaning depends on the dialect of the speaker.
I'm probably just referencing my idiolect when I give this example:
"Why do I think the unaspirated term has a nuance of 'because'? Why, it's obvious. It stands in apposition to the independent clause that follows, It is a kind of 'placeholder' for that clause."
Or so this seems to me, but (again) this may be just my idiolect speaking.
Jeffery Hodges
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A few seconds of research led me to this. The article suggests that (1) the "hw" pronunciation is arguably more traditional, (2) the "great majority" of English speakers now pronounce their "wh" words in accordance with the so-called "wine-whine merger," and (3) the "hw" pronunciation is generally associated with parts of the American Southeast (see map). Go figure.
Hwaet!
Jeffery Hodges
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