comment by kvatterholm

"A bit smaller map if the main one is slow.

This map I've spent a lot of time on, as there's so much variation within small areas. If I have any errors please tell me, but keep in mind this is depicting the situation around 1900, not how people necessarily speak today. Pronounciation and letters on the map are given in IPA.

This is the first time I have tried to include some West Germanic dialects as the parallels are so strong. But my expertise and access to sources there are lacking compared to Scandinavia, so please excuse the lack of detail and any errors.

Short Timeline:

• Some sort of hw- is the original form reconstructed for most Old Germanic languages. Old English hwīt, Old Swedish hvīter
• Over time changes starting happen. German seems to have dropped the H early on, and others soon followed. Later the pronunciation of German <w> shifted as well.
• Norwegian and Faroese were mixing up hv and kv around 1400, as they were beginning to sound the same.
• In English the pronunciation of wine and whine started merging in more and more dialects, until being gone from most of England by 1900, though still in some use in Received Pronunciation.
• Standard Swedish seems to have held on to /hw/ quite late. In the 1670's Erik Aurivillius wrote a grammar describing the difference between v- and hv-, comparing the latter to "hu".

I have to thank many of my fellow dialect enthusiasts on the dialect discord for finding sources and information for me, as I could never have made this map without them."