Why is the “wh” in “Where”/”What”/”White” sometimes pronounced with an “h”?

Question

Why is the “wh” in “Where”/”What”/”White” sometimes pronounced with an “h”?

In: 1

Answer 1

Because at some point in the past it was always pronounced with an “h”, which is also the reason why it’s still written that way. Most dialects/accents of English lost the “h” in pronunciation since then, but a few didn’t.

Answer 2

What, where, when and others are from old english, but they used to be spelt hwat, hwere, and hwen. After the normons conquered england in 1066 there was a significant merging of languages and some of these words were then spelled differently. I guess some still kept the ‘h’ pronunciation