> Do they pronounce the H first in Britain? The early US, in its anti-British attitudes, changed the standard spellings of English, so couldn't they change their pronunciation, too?
>
> gab"Hwy not?"by

To me, the pronunciation of "wh" words as "hw" evokes dreadful upper-class and middle-class-pretending-to-be-upper-class Pommie pretentiousness. OK, it's not pretentious if you genuinely do speak that way, but that's the way it always sounds to me. Sorry.

We have our very own "wh" issue in New Zealand too. A lot of Maori place names start with "Wh" and also with "W". It used to be perfectly simple: the former is pronounced "f" and the latter is pronounced "w". Nowadays the debate is insane. Are ALL "wh"s pronounced "f"? Or just some of them? Which ones, then? Does it depend on which tribe's particular accent the area was named in originally? Was it misspelled by English colonists? At this point, political correctness drives all vestiges of thought from everyone's tiny brains and they all start pronouncing the normal "w" as "f" too. Eek. Sometimes I think if I hear one more newsreader pronounce Wanganui as if it was Whanganui, I'll scream.

Brunnen-"still on about newsreaders, yeah"G