Winging a linguistics lecture to you

Hi dug,

I think you must mean 'whingeing'. The 'h' is constantly dropping from words like this because English folk pronounce 'w' and 'wh' in exactly the same way, which always jars for Scots who pronounce them differently.

btw, Margaret Thatcher (remember?) started pronouncing 'wh' the Scottish way after she went for elocution lessons. John Wells, the phonetician at UCL, pointed out that the 'wh' became the same as 'w' in England long before the 'r' dropped out of words like 'cart', so it's interesting that the elocution teacher still perceived this regression as worthwhile.

The 'e' is there to make the 'ng' sound different from 'winging', 'singing' etc.

B-)

(thank you Billy grin)