on March 20, 2011 11:44 pm The acceptance of the where/were merging is far more threatening, I think, as it involves the extinction of a phoneme. But it could plead the same thing: that HW sound is just too hard to say. Oh, I wondered what you were talking about until the end there, not being aware of anybody anywhere ever merging "where" and "were"...you meant "where" and "wear". (HW sound isn't hard to say...it's just not said, in modern English...that's not "threatening", it's a done deal. Retention of "hw" in some dialects is not standard English) Michael on March 21, 2011 8:21 am venqax, Like I said, I'm fairly relaxed either way. The Oxford Dictionaries list irregardless as informal, whereas the two pronunciations of February are listed as standard. Look, I know how you feel. There are some nonstandard pronunciations -- and a few standard ones -- that really bug me too, but as much as I sympathize, I think you're losing this one. That's according to the Oxford Corpus, at least. No shame in that. Fowler lost umpteen fights. I am more concerned about grammar and usage. For example, I cringe when I hear educated people say things such as the following: (1) "There's some apples on the table," and (2) "Whoever lost a wallet can pick up their wallet at the office" (using the plural "their" when one should use the singular form of "he" or "his." Are the grammarians going to officially change that because everyone