Words with a Silent H

I'm with ThirdParty on this one. Case in point: Ghee. If you take out the h, it's gee, as in "Oh gee, maybe that h isn't actually silent."

Stewie does not pronounce the "h". He aspirates the "w". (releasing a puff of air in conjunction with the sound. To find the distinction, put your hand in front of your mouth and say the word "pit" and then "spit". You can feel the puff of air on the aspirated "p" in "pit" and feel its absence in the unaspirated "p" in "spit"). Aspirating the "wh" is common among older Americans in particular but is largely on it's way out. In English, the "w" vs. "wh" distinction is made by aspiration or lack there of, not "pronouncing the 'H'". Aspirated or unaspirated, it's the same morpheme either way.

Stewie is using an older pronunciation of the word. It sounds like "hwale" when he says "whale." The h in these words is there for a reason, but the pronunciation has changed, and in American English people understand these to be different morphemes, which is why it sounds so weird to us when Stewie does it.

@onegonecat

The 'Stewie Griffin' 'wh' is voiceless, not aspirated - very different. And *phoneme, not morpheme.

But I also believe it is acceptable to use "an" for a word beginning with h when the stress is not on the first syllable (equivalently, maybe it's correct to non-aspirate them), as in "an hotel". I could be talking b-ll-cks mind, and do like to wind up colleagues by referring to "an hydrologist", etc. I am also a huge fan of Stewie Griffin ;-).