The word "Greenwhich"

Hello !

There's a question in my mind since ages: Why do you pronounce "Greenwhich" not like "green witch" but like "grannich" ? In other words: why is the w silent and the wide -ee- turned into a "closed" e ?

Espeland

Why do you pronounce "Greenwhich" not like "green witch" but like "grannich" ? In other words: why is the w silent and the wide -ee- turned into a "closed" e ?

I'm sure you realize that this is not an isolated example.  Many, many words in English are likewise not pronounced the way it seems they should be pronounced from the spelling.  The pronunciation changes over hundreds of years, but the spelling remains the same, so many words which sounded just as they were spelled centuries ago now sound different from their spellings.  (English is not the only language whose spelling never bothered to keep up with changes in pronunciation throughout history.  French is another good example.)

CJ 

The word is usually spelled "Greenwich", not "Greenwhich". Unless you are thinking of a particular example that you are sure is conventionally spelled "Greenwhich", you should stick with the usual spelling.

There are a number of English place names like this: "Harwich", "Woolwich", "Berwick" and "Warwick" are examples. There are also surnames such as "Beswick" (variously pronounced with or without "w") and "Fenwick" (these, as it happens, are also place names). Offhand I can't think of any examples that aren't proper names (apart from words like "who", "***", "wring", "wrap" etc., but I assume you're not talking about those). That doesn't mean there aren't any, of course.

Edit: Huh? System has asterisked out "w h o r e".

Mr Wordy

Offhand I can't think of any examples that aren't proper names (apart from words like "who", "***", "wring", "wrap" etc., but I assume you're not talking about those). That doesn't mean there aren't any, of course.

"Answer".

Duh.

CalifJim

And "sword"!

Duh.