# English: sword, two, answer



## Stoggler

Do we know when the /w/ sound was lost from the above words in English? 

Has it survived in any varieties (I'm aware of "twa" in Scots)?


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## Unoverwordinesslogged

Stoggler said:


> Do we know when the /w/ sound was lost from the above words in English?



And why /w/ lives on in:_ twane_ yet not _two_.

As for timescaling, North Germanic doesn't do "w" so mayhap _two_ got 'Norse-washed' so-to-speak - whatever time that would allow to happen?


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## Stoggler

Is twane even a word? I can't find it in any dictionary. At the very least it's obscure or archaic so hardly in the same category as sword, two and answer.

I assume the /w/ was pronounced at the time English spelling stabilized so the latter Middle English period so not sure what influence Norse would have on it, especially as the modern-day Scandinavian languages have cognates beginning sv- (which used to be pronounced /sw-/.)

Are you sure English is your native language? I really struggle to understand your bizarre phraseologies and non-standard words. Please can you write in clear English?


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## Scholiast

Greetings



> And why /w/ lives on in:_ twane_ yet not _two_



I think unoverwordinesslogged probably meant "twain" - archaic, yes, but preserved like some other archaisms in some fossilised expressions ("never the twain shall meet").

Σ


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## Unoverwordinesslogged

Scholiast said:


> Greetings
> 
> 
> 
> I think unoverwordinesslogged probably meant "twain" - archaic, yes, but preserved like some other archaisms in some fossilised expressions ("never the twain shall meet").
> 
> Σ



Thanks Scholiast

I can confirm that _twain_ did indeed get _twa_-washed so-to-speak.


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## Forero

It is to be noted that "sword" and "two" follow the "w" with a back vowel, and "answer" follows it with a close central vowel.

But "twain" follows the "w" with a front or an open central vowel. "Swear" follows it with a front vowel too.

We also don't pronounce the "w" of "who" or  "whore", and not everyone pronounces it in "whoop", "toward", and "leeward".

In other words, for the "w" sound to disappear, the next sound has to be "w"-like, which "ai" and "ea" are not.

Also, a similar word without a "w" blocks the disappearance of the "w", e.g. "swerve" vs. "serve". Or is "swerve" too new a word to lose its "w"?


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## Unoverwordinesslogged

Forero said:


> It is to be noted that "sword" and "two" follow the "w" with a back vowel, and "answer" follows it with a close central vowel.
> 
> But "twain" follows the "w" with a front or an open central vowel. "Swear" follows it with a front vowel too.
> 
> We also don't pronounce the "w" of "who" or  "whore", and not everyone pronounces it in "whoop", "toward", and "leeward".
> 
> *In other words, for the "w" sound to disappear, the next sound has to be "w"-like, which "ai" and "ea" are not.*
> 
> *Also, a similar word without a "w" blocks the disappearance of the "w", e.g. "swerve" vs. "serve".* Or is "swerve" too new a word to lose its "w"?



There's a kind of modern-day folklore about 'w' not being pronounced in _-wich_ and _-wick_ placenames (in the UK) when the truth is that there are just as many -wich and -wick placenames where the 'w' is pronunced. An good example being: Ipswich. Please could you explain how the word Ipswich fits into the foreboldend text of yours, thank you.

Anyway, other than the more well-known placenames, I get the feeling most of us bend towards pronoucing the 'ws' in -wich and -wick placenames that we are unfamiliar with - for example I don't think anyone outside the northeast of England (also Scotland/Northern Ireland(?)) would pronounce _Alnwick, Annick_ nor _Alnick_ like the locals do.



Examples of placenames where 'w' is and isn't prounounced:

Ipswich
Droitwich
Sandwich
Hammerwich
Leftwich(?)
Oxwich
and so forth..

Norwich
Dulwich(?)
Greenwich
Woolwich
Harwich
and so forth

PS isn't there somewhere like boxing, darts, wrestling(?) where the referee's countdown is said like: _one-ah, two-ah, three-ah_ or is it just me. Anyway, the referee's two-ah do seem to bear some kind of "w" sound.


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## Stoggler

Anyway, when did the w stop being pronounced in the three words in the thread title (that is after all what I asked, not for a list of placenames that do or don't have a w pronounced)?


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## Forero

Stoggler said:


> Has it survived in any varieties (I'm aware of "twa" in Scots)?


"Twa", like "twain", is not one of the three words you are asking about in your first question, but they support the theory that phonetics drove the change.

My thinking is, if we can work out where the boundaries are between "w" words that have and those that haven't lost their "w" sound, we might be able to find a word or some words that missed the change, which might tell us when, if ever, the change must have ended. We might also be able to understand the reason for the change and from that deduce when it happened from the timing, if known, of other changes that helped to create that reason.

I do see a pattern in the placenames in Unover's lists, but placenames might not be as helpful as regular words. Older place names might be, but newer ones might be based on some sort of analogy, or whim, and confuse the timeline.


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## berndf

Stoggler said:


> Do we know when the /w/ sound was lost from the above words in English?
> 
> Has it survived in any varieties (I'm aware of "twa" in Scots)?


I don't think there is a common answer to this. All these words have their own phonetic history. In _two_ it is most likely an effect of the Great Vowel Shift, in this case the shift from [o:] to [u:]. Try to pronounce [two:] and then [twu:] and it will become obvious. This shift happened in the 16th century. This also explains the modern pronunciation of _who_.

The effect in _answer _and _sword _must be around the reorganization of the vowel system in front of /r/ when /r/ changed from [r] to [ɹ] that created the rhotacized vowels (cf. Scottish English where this didn't happen and e.g. mergers like in _*per*son_ and _*pur*se_ did not happen). This change also happened around the 16th century. This was also around the time when the unetymological <w> in _whore _(original spelling _hore_, cf. German _Hure_) was added. For this misspelling to occur, the muting of /w/ in such phonetic contexts must already have happened.


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## Stoggler

Forero said:


> "Twa", like "twain", is not one of the three words you are asking about in your first question, but they support the theory that phonetics drove the change.



Twa is Scots for two. I asked about different varieties of English where the w has survived, and offered that one example that I was aware of. So I didn't ask about it, but my raising it of it was pertinent.


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## Stoggler

Thanks Bernd for the response.


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## sumelic

Berndf, why do you attribute the loss of /w/ in sword to the rhotacization of the vowel rather than simply to the quality of the vowel? If sword was in the FORCE lexical set (I don't know if it was, but I wonder if it might have been due to the raising of the vowel in words like "two" and "who"), then it would have had /oː/ just like two and who, and couldn't that have triggered the loss of w?


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## berndf

Subsequent /r/ inhibited some of the changes of the GWS, among them /o:/>/u:/.


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## Forero

Stoggler said:


> Twa is Scots for two. I asked about different varieties of English where the w has survived, and offered that one example that I was aware of. So I didn't ask about it, but my raising it of it was pertinent.


_Two_ and _twa_ were variants of the same word, true, but _two_ underwent /o:/>/u:/ and _twa_ did not change. I would not expect "twa" to lose its "w" sound.

I think we are really saying the same thing, and I think Berndf has your answer (~ 16th century).


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## Walshie79

The place names are a bit random, though to me there seems to be a tendency for those in London/SE England/East Anglia to lose the w more than in other regions- compare Norwich with Northwich in NW England, which is exactly the same name but still pronounced as spelt. I'm sure I've heard Ipswich without the w, but it usually has it.

Answer is originally an-swear; perhaps the fact that it's stressed on the first syllable is the cause of the loss? It hasn't gone in "forswear", stressed on the second. One that lost it a long time ago, so much that it has gone from the spelling, is "so" (Old English "swa").


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## sumelic

Some words that had wā in Old English developed an /u:/ sound in Modern English, the regular reflex after the GVS of ME long /o:/. But usually, OE ā developed to either ME short /o/ or long /ɔː/, right? Since these words are described as having an /o:/ sound right before the GVS, that means the vowel must have been raised at some earlier point? So the process in these words would be OE /wā/ > ME /wo:/ > E /uː/ (leaving out intermediate steps I'm not sure about the timing of). Also, do we know for sure if the spelling of words like “whore” and “whole” with a “w” indicates the loss of /w/ in the cluster /hw/ before ME /o:/ and /ɔ:/, leading <wh> to be reinterpreted as a spelling for plain /h/ before these vowels, or if it indicates a prothetic addition of /w/ in these two words (and possibly in others where it's not reflected in the modern spelling) that was later reversed? I think I also read the latter theory somewhere.

(There's some discussion in this blog post and the comments at Language Evolution.)

I’ll list some word correspondences (modern E on the left, OE on the right)

Some words where /w/ was lost:


> Words where the vowel was ME /o:/, E /uː/
> so, also < swā, alswā  (the w is also lost in German)
> two < twā
> who < hwā
> whom < hwām
> whose < hwæs (I guess it underwent paradigmatic leveling?)
> ooze < wāse (It looks like there was also a form wōs this merged with?)





> Words followed by a rhoticized vowel:
> sword < sweord
> answer < andswaru


Some words where it wasn’t lost:


> Words followed by a rhoticized vowel:
> word < word
> worth < weorth


These words had a w followed by a rhoticized vowel. Was the w not lost in words like these because it was at the start of a word, and in a stressed syllable? Or was the vowel in these words already unrounded then, unlike the one in "sword"?

Some words without an etymological /w/:


> whore < hōre
> whole < hāl (wh- spelling dates to early 15c. accord. to etymonline)
> one < ān (Irregular w-prothesis)


Verb forms like swole, swore, wore that have a related form where the w is not followed by a back vowel are probably not reliable guides to the sound changes due to analogical leveling.
But, I also found some other verb-related words that retained /w/ for some reason:
swoon < geswōgen
swoop < swāpen


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