They are weirder ones for sure since they look like Ps without extra training. But just slapping two Vs or Us together like the Romans is a hack compared to the historic ƿ (from Runic ᚹ).
But even stranger is why on Earth were “hw” flipped by printing press folks after hundreds of years with the h first due to pronunciation… I wouldn’t be surprised if the voiceless labial–velar fricative went out of fashion based the new spelling to where many (maybe most) speakers don’t differentiate between “w” & “wh”.
I know—but they used to spell the h first too. Almost everyone used to pronounce it ʍ as well, hence my theory that the pronunciation stopped after the wild choice to do a spelling reform
I have no problem reading text that uses these characters, but hƿich and hƿile really bother me.
https://youtu.be/nfVEvgWd4ek
They are weirder ones for sure since they look like Ps without extra training. But just slapping two Vs or Us together like the Romans is a hack compared to the historic ƿ (from Runic ᚹ).
But even stranger is why on Earth were “hw” flipped by printing press folks after hundreds of years with the h first due to pronunciation… I wouldn’t be surprised if the voiceless labial–velar fricative went out of fashion based the new spelling to where many (maybe most) speakers don’t differentiate between “w” & “wh”.
I was talking about the beginning “h”, not the ƿ. Because there are people who pronounce it like that.
I know—but they used to spell the h first too. Almost everyone used to pronounce it ʍ as well, hence my theory that the pronunciation stopped after the wild choice to do a spelling reform
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_labial–velar_fricative
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin-script_digraphs#W