Is the pronunciation of 'where' in English commonly heard as 'w+schwa'?

[fxdung]

In this video that the link is below, there is a phrase: "where I spoke in Egypt" ,time is about 0:12. I hear "where" as "w+schwa".Is that correct or my ear hearing wrongly?

 

[DaveC426913]

Dunno, sounded normal to me.
I heard "where" as if a homonym of ware.

 

[mjc123]

I heard wṛ (with vocalic r), typical American pronunciation. English pronunciation would be wεǝ.
You may have heard it as wǝr (I spoke), i.e. wǝ with an intrusive r between vowels, as in Laura Norder.

 

[Mark44]

I heard "where" as if a homonym of ware.

Some people pronounce "where" and "ware/wear" the same, but others don't. One online dictionary shows a phonetic representation of "where" as [(h)wer], and gives the etymology as Old English hwǣr, of Germanic origin.

In the same vein is the distinction between the pronunciations of "win" and "when." Many speakers pronounce these the same, but some others will pronounce "when" something like as if it were spelled "hwen."

Another example is how "whale" is sometimes pronounced differently from "wail" or "wale" (the latter as in "wide wale corduroy." This disparity in pronunciation is something I wondered about for a long time until I came across a dictionary definition of "whale" that included its etymology -- Old English hwæl, of Germanic origin.

My suspicion is that many words in English that start with "wh" are of Germanic origin and were actually written in Old English as "hw...".

 

[DaveC426913]

 

[symbolipoint]

I could not hear much distinctly. "Where" was pronounced closely enough that nothing sounded strange; nothing unusual. Maybe the way he said was just less clear at that narrow moment.