Sharing about English Lesson

This is from Metro, a free newspaper distributed throughout London (23 June 2010). 

The headline, Water way to set a record, would probably be puzzling to many speakers of English, unless they realize that water way is supposed to be a pun on what a way.  Since water and what a are pronounced /'w??t?/ and /'w?t?/ respectively in many varieties of British English, they are reasonably close rhymes.

But of course this doesn�t work for many American speakers, most of whom are rhotic (i.e. pronounce the /r/ at the end of water), pronounce wh as /hw/, and use /?/ in what.

Like the Americans, most Singaporeans pronounce what as /w?t/.  In fact, most would be surprised to learn that what is pronounced /w?t/ in British Received Pronunciation � the pronunciation model traditionally adopted in Singapore schools (but which is evidently on its way out) � and that wander is pronounced as /'w?nd?/.