The silent W in English pronunciation?

Question

As a Brit, I just instinctively unserstand that places like Southwark and Chiswick are pronounced Suthuck and Chizzick. But my American friends think we're utterly nuts for not pronouncing them South Wark and Chizz Wick. Anyone know when it became English practice to use the silent w and why, this being so, it hasn't dropped out of the spelling too?

Good points here folks. Especially liked the line about Bicester being pronounced "Bister". What about that old favourite - Worcestershire sauce. Pronounced - get this, folks - "Wooster". Also, my wife, a couple of days ago, came across the place name Isleworth. She still doesn't believe me it's pronounced Eye-zilworth, saying "C'mon, it's got to be either Izzleworth or Ileworth..." Anybody else reckon the British just do this to confuse everyone else?

Answer 1

There's is no way of determining the pronunciation of English place-names from the spelling. The W is pronounced in the Cheshire "witches" (Northwich, Middlewich and Nantwich). It's possible to go from Gillingham to Gillingham, changing at London Waterloo. The one in Kent is pronounced with a soft G and the one in Dorset with a hard one. Peter Sellers made fun of American pronunciation in "Balham, the Gateway to the South." As to Scottish placenames, few English go to Milngavie, because they can neither spell or pronounce it!
I don't think I've answered your question, but I've given you some information. Is Bettws-y-Coed pronounced Bet-us-y-Coid or Betsy Co-ed?

Answer 2

There are so many English words that are not pronounced the way in which they are spelt that someone came up with the following article when the European Union first came into being. It is an extract from the Swedish Magazine “Specialbilaga Aktiva Hundsportareð Jan/Feb 1998, Edition No.161.ÌÌÌð To really get a sense of this article you need to read it out loud!!!

The European commission have just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German, which was the other possibility.
ENGLISH SPELLING
As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty’s Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as “Euro English”.

In the first year ‘s’ will replace the soft ’c’. Sertainly this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard ‘c’ will be dropped in favour of ’k’ . This should klear up konfusion and komputer keyboards kan have one less letter.
ENTHUSIAM
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome ‘ph’ will be replased with the ‘f‘. This will make words like “fotograf” 20 persent shorter !Ì In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplicated changes are possible. The Government will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always been a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent ’e’ in the languag is disgrasful, and they should go away.

REPLASING
By the 4th year, people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing ‘th’ . During
Ze fifz year, ze unnecessary ‘o ‘ kan be droped from words containing ’ou’ And similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difficulties and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understan ech ozer in ze EU. Ze Drem vil finali kum tru.

Written by Ð Olaslig namnteckning

Answer 3

I think Blondies answer says it all. We Brits should be grateful that this is our native language and not one to be learnt as a foreign (notice the spelling) student. I have travelled all over the United Kingdom in my time and yet it was only a year ago that I found out that the place name 'Bicester' was pronounced 'Bister'. How can you explain that?!

Answer 4

huh, that is interesting. When I was reading your question I said in my head south-wark and chizz wick (I am American). I went on Merriam-Webster.com to find out more (and perhaps an etymology of the words) and I noticed they are both cities or towns.

Are their other examples of words where Brits drop the W and Americans don't? Maybe it's just those two places and maybe they were pronounced differently a long time ago??? I have no idea...just throwing out ideas.

Answer 5

It is dialect of where a person lives
I had the hardest time when I moved to the New England area
From the west coast
Some of the names here aren't spelled correctly LOL
or said with the proper pronunciation

And no offense but the word
language I pronounce
lang-wuge
different areas , different dialect

Answer 6

If you look at English spelling in depth, you will see there are no hard and fast rules. if you are foreign (like my husband), reading is a hard matter. Things like 'through', if you look at it it does not use any other letters than thru! so you would then assume that 'ough' is igored, then you read 'trough', or 'rough' and it's suddenly said as 'ff'.There are SO many silent letters in our language because of us being invaded by romans and vikings and everyone else! Look at the word language, we SAY it lang-widch, but look at how it's spelt, not a 'd' in sight! Until you experience someone whose first language isn't English trying to learn the damn thing you never really know how hard it really is!

Answer 7

But what about Ipswich and Sandwich? The "w" is pronounced.

And New Yorkers and knowledgeable non-New Yorkers know the "w" is not pronounced in Greenwich Village.

It's all subject to the whims of the locals.

Answer 8

no W sound. Maybe it was meant to be pronounced (as in the related German word Schwert--'shvert'), but it is not pronounced today. Did she also pronounce the W in two? The word knight was once pronounced closer to k-ni(short i)-(ch as in German) t, and we now only pronounce the n-i (long i)-t. English pronounciation and spelling are not very closely related!

Answer 9

your american friends are idiots. american english has tons of silent w's that we still use to this day. the wright brothers, whole, etc... but I assume that it may have been pronounced but as all words people started saying it one way and it stuck

Answer 10

http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/grammar/archive/silentletters01.html

This site has some good info on this. Copy and paste URL.

Hope it helps, great question BTW! I read the article with interest.