"th" as in "the" or "thread"

[DanaC]

My grandmother was from Scotland and would always say "It's not 'wale' it's ..." and then she would pronounce 'whale' so you could hear the 'h,' but it sounded to me more like the letters were reversed, 'hwale.' Or 'hwat' or 'hwen.' I don't remember about 'who.'

With most of the 'wh' words, the letters were reversed as Old English (Anglo-Saxon) evolved into Modern English: 'what' = hwa, 'where' = hwaer, 'who' = hwa.

You still can hear a slight hint of that 'hw' sound in some English regional pronunciations, but it's most pronounced over the border in Scotland.