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.).
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.
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.).
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.