WHO AND WHOM

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30823, 7 August 1965, Page 12

WHO AND WHOM

(Specially written for "The Press" by ARNOLD WALL.) BECAUSE he is so familiar a figure we do not regard the uniformed policeman as remarkable though he is not dressed like anybody else. Something like this has happened with “who.”

“Who” is one of a small family—“who,” “what,” “which" and “why”—all the other three are pronounced with. initial “w” in Southern English and “wh” in New Zealand according to tradition, but the "wh” in “who” is pronounced as simple “h” —“hop.” In Anglo-Saxon the spelling, was “hwa” with long “a.” The “hw” did not stand for “h” plus “w” but was a device to represent the •‘sharp” sound of. “w” so that “hw” and “w” are a pair like “f” and “v," “p” and “b,” “s” and “z” and so on.

The long “a” of AngloSaxon normally became long “o” in modern English, “ham” became “home,” “ban” became “bone” and so on. Thus “hwa” would have become “hwoh” with long “o” but for the “labialising” influence of the “w” under which it became “whoo” (in later spelling the “hw” becomes “wh.”) This looks like the owl’s “tu-whit, tu whoo” doesn’t it? For a time it was so pronounced according to the old students of the pro-