The spelling patterns of the letter W find it most often paired with another letter. When W is the second letter after a consonant, the most common combinations are DW, SW, TW and in Old English CW and HW. Earlier I covered those other combinations. (link.mingpao.com/72700.htm & link.mingpao.com/72699.htm) Today I will focus on the important Old English CW and HW combinations and how they are used in Modern English. 

The Old English CW and HW survived into Modern English in different forms. The CW structure in Old English changed to QU in Modern English. So cwen (spelt with wynn as cǷen) became queen and cwic (cǷic) became quick. 

[audio 1]

The HW sound in Old English has slowly deteriorated to a W sound in Modern English. In Middle English the spelling changed from HW to WH. So the Old English hwæt changed to what; hwenne changed to when; hwi changed to why. All of the Old English question words started with HW, including the word how. The word hwo from Old English (Saxon dialect) changed to the Modern English how. 

The HW/WH question words include what, when, where, who, whom, which, whose, why, whether, whither, whence and how. They are used to ask for information; properly the answer cannot be yes or no. (Questions using the verbs be or do, and their variants/tenses, can be answered yes or no.)

[audio 2]

Although the WH question words are important, this change also happened to other Old English HW words as well. Examples include, hweol changed to wheel; hwit changed to white and hwæte changed to wheat.

Originally words such as whine were pronounced differently from wine, whether from weather, which from witch, where from wear and so on. Up into modern times some people in isolated places kept the Old English HW sound for words now spelt WH and pronounced W. In a consonant pair, the letter W is usually the second letter after the other consonant, if we keep in mind that WH and QU were originally HW and CW the pattern holds. 

[audio 3]

Related Articles:

‧The Letter A a

‧AW

‧The Schwa Sound

‧B

‧CK

‧CC

‧Stranger Pronunciations of C

‧SC

‧The Letter C is Useless

‧Silent D Is Not Always Silent

‧D

‧The Magic-e

‧PH in Suffixes and Prefixes

‧The F sound: FF & GH

‧The F Sound

‧Hard And Soft G Spelling Patterns

‧Common G Spelling Patterns

‧How We Got Hard And Soft Gs

‧No English words end with the letter i?

‧Is the K Sound a C or an S?

‧Old English Spelling Patterns with K

‧Foreign spelling patterns with K

‧NG

‧The Oi/Oy Sound

‧Long U or Long OO

‧When is Initial U Short and when is it Long?

‧The Long U Digraphs

‧Magic E and the Long U Sound

‧The Letter W

‧W spelling patterns

‧X

‧Pronouncing The Letter Y At The Front Of A Word

‧Pronouncing The Letter Y In The Middle Of A Word

‧Pronouncing The letter Y At The End Of A Word

‧The letter Y & The Double Vowel Rule

‧The Last Letter is a Foreigner

‧The Spellings of Z

‧The name of Z

‧Silent letters and why English spelling is such a mess (1): Old English

‧Silent letters and why English spelling is such a mess (2): Fake Latin

‧I Both Love and Hate Spell-Checkers

‧The Rule: I before E, except after C

by John Larrysson [email protected]

A native English speaker who has been teaching practical English in Hong Kong for over two decades.

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