The pronunciation of the digraph ⟨wh⟩ in English has changed over time, and still varies today between different regions and accents. It is now most commonly pronounced, the same as a plain initial ⟨w⟩, although some dialects, particularly those of Scotland, Ireland, and the Southern United States, retain the traditional pronunciation, generally realized as, a voiceless "w" sound. The process by which the historical has become in most modern varieties of English is called the wine–whine merger. It is also referred to as glide cluster reduction.
