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The phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters.

H-cluster reductions

The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, involving consonant clusters beginning with /h/ that have lost the /h/ (or become reduced to /h/) in some or all dialects.

Reductions of /hw/

The cluster /hw/ (spelled ⟨wh⟩ since Middle English) has been subject to two kinds of reduction:

• Reduction to /h/ before rounded vowels (due to /hw/ being perceived as a /h/ with the labialization characteristic of that environment). This occurred with the word how in the Old English period, and with who, whom and whose in Middle English (the latter words having had an unrounded vowel in Old English).
• Reduction to ?pojem=, a development that has affected the speech of the great majority of English speakers, causing them to pronounce ⟨wh-⟩ the same as ⟨w-⟩ (sometimes called the wine–whine merger or glide cluster reduction). The distinction is maintained, however, in Scotland, most of Ireland, and some Southern American English.

Reduction of /hl/, /hr/ and /hn/

The Old English consonant clusters /hl/, /hr/ and /hn/ were reduced to /l/, /r/, and /n/ in Middle English. For example, Old English hlāf, hring and hnutu become loaf, ring and nut in Modern English.

Reduction of /hj/

In some dialects of English the cluster /hj/ is reduced to /j/,^[1] leading to pronunciations like /juːdʒ/ for huge and /ˈjuːmən/ for human, and making hew a homophone of ewe and you. This is sometimes considered a type of glide cluster reduction, but it is much less widespread than wh-reduction, and is generally stigmatized where it is found. Aside from accents with general H-dropping, in the United States this reduction is mostly found in accents of Philadelphia and New York City; it also occurs in Cork accents of Irish English. In other dialects of English, hew and yew remain distinct; however, the cluster /hj/ of hew, human, etc. is often reduced from to just (a voiceless palatal fricative).^[2][3]

Y-cluster reductions

Y-cluster reductions are reductions of clusters ending with the palatal approximant /j/, which is the sound of ⟨y⟩ in yes, and is sometimes referred to as "yod", from the Hebrew letter yod(h), which has the sound . Many such clusters arose in dialects in which the falling diphthong /ɪu/ (the product of the merger of several Middle English vowel sequences) became the rising diphthong /juː/. (For more information, see Phonological history of English high back vowels.) They were thus often found before the vowel /uː/, as in cube /kjuːb/ – which was in some cases modified to /ʊə/ or /ʊ/ before (historical) /r/, as in cure, or weakened to /ʊ/ or /ə/ as in argument. They also occurred in words ending in -ion and -ious, such as nation and precious.

This change from /ɪu/ to /juː/, which had occurred in London by the end of the 17th century, did not take place in all dialects. A few dialects, notably in Wales, as well as in some parts of northern England, New England, and the American South, still retain a (falling) /ɪu/ diphthong where standard English has /juː/ – these dialects therefore lack the clusters with /j/ and have not been subject to the reductions described here.^[4]

The diphthongs /juː/ or /ɪʊ̯/ are most commonly indicated by the spellings eu, ew, uCV (where C is any consonant and V is any vowel), ue and ui, as in feud, few, mute, cue and suit, while the historical monophthong /uː/ is commonly indicated by the spellings oo and ou, as in moon and soup.

Yod-dropping

Yod-dropping is the elision of the /j/ from certain syllable-initial clusters of the type described above. Particular cases of yod-dropping may affect all or some of the dialects that have the relevant clusters.

The change of to in these positions (as described above) produced some clusters which would have been difficult or impossible to pronounce, which led to what John Wells calls Early Yod Dropping in which the was elided in the following environments:^[5]

• After /ʃ, tʃ, dʒ/, for example chute /ʃuːt/, chew /tʃuː/, juice /dʒuːs/
• After /j/, for example yew /juː/ (compare in some conservative dialects)
• After /r/, for example rude /ruːd/
• After stop+/l/ clusters, for example blue /bluː/

The words you and yew in a dialect that was not subject to early yod-dropping

you, yew

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The previously mentioned accents that did not have the → change were not subject to this process. Thus, for example, in much Welsh English pairs like chews/choose, yew/you and threw/through remain distinct: the first member of each pair has the diphthong /ɪʊ̯/, while the second member has /uː/:^[6]

• chews /tʃɪʊ̯z/, choose /tʃuːz/
• yew /jɪʊ̯/, you /juː/
• threw /θrɪʊ̯/, through /θruː/

Conversely, an initial /j/ does not appear in Welsh English before /iː/ in words such as yeast and yield.^[7]

Many varieties of English have extended yod-dropping to the following environments if the /j/ is in the same syllable as the preceding consonant:

• After /s/, for example suit /suːt/
• After /l/, for example lute /ˈluːt/
• After /z/, for example Zeus /ˈzuːs/
• After /θ/, for example enthuse /ɛnˈθuːz/

Yod-dropping in the above environments used to be considered nonstandard in England but now also occurs by educated RP-speakers.^[8] (The /j/ after /s/ is not normally dropped in RP in medial positions, however: compare pursuit /pəˈsjuːt/.) In General American, yod-dropping is found not only in the above environments but also after /t/, /d/ and /n/, for example tune /ˈtuːn/, dew /ˈduː/, new /ˈnuː/

The lack of yod-dropping in those contexts has occasionally been held to be a shibboleth distinguishing Canadians from Americans. However, in a survey conducted in the Golden Horseshoe area of Southern Ontario in 1994, over 80% of respondents under the age of 40 pronounced student and news without yod.^[9]

General American thus undergoes yod-dropping after all alveolar consonants. A few accents of American English, such as working-class Southern American English, however, preserve the distinction in pairs like do/dew because, like in the Welsh English dialects discussed above, they retain a diphthong /ɪʊ̯/ in words in which RP has /juː/: /lut~lɪʊ̯t/, /du~dɪʊ̯/, etc.^[10]

However, in words like annual, menu, volume, Matthew, continue, etc., with a syllable break before the /j/, there is no yod-dropping. The same applies accordingly to British and other accents; the yod is often dropped after initial /l/, for example, but it is not dropped in words like volume or value. (British speakers omit the /j/ in figure, but most Americans retain it.)

Additionally, there is no /j/ in British pronunciations of coupon and Pulitzer, /ˈkuːpɒn/ and /ˈpʊlɪtsə/ respectively, but many American speakers keep the yod, realizing them as /ˈkjuːpɒn/ and /ˈpjuːlɪtsər/, although Pulitzer with the pew sound is widely incorrect.^[11][12]

In New Zealand and to some extent Australian English, debut is mainly pronounced without the yod as /ˈdæebʉː/.^[13]

Yod-dropping after /t/, /d/, and /n/ was also a traditional feature of Cockney speech, which continues to be the case after /n/, but now, after /t/ and /d/, yod-coalescence is now more common.^[14]

Some East Anglian accents such as Norfolk dialect extend yod-dropping not only to the position after /t/, /d/ or /n/ but also to the position after nonalveolar consonants as well: pairs like beauty/booty, mute/moot, cute/coot can then be homophonous.^[15] A well-known series of British television advertisements beginning in the 1980s featured Bernard Matthews, who was from Norfolk and described his turkeys as "bootiful" (for beautiful). Such accents pronounce a /j/ in words like "use", "unit", etc. only if there is no consonant before the /j/.

Yod-coalescence

Yod-coalescence is a process that fuses the clusters /dj, tj, sj, zj/ into the sibilants respectively (for the meanings of those symbols, see English phonology). The first two are examples of affrication.

Unlike yod-dropping, yod-coalescence frequently occurs with clusters that would be considered to span a syllable boundary and so commonly occurs before unstressed syllables. For example, in educate, the /dj/ cluster would not usually be subject to yod-dropping in General American, as the /d/ is assigned to the previous syllable, but it commonly coalesces to . Here are a few examples of yod-coalescence universal in all English dialects:

• /tj/ → in most words ending -ture, such as nature
• /dj/ → in soldier ˈsoʊldʒəɹ
• /sj/ → ʃ in words ending with -ssure such as pressure ˈpɹɛʃəɹ (also in words ending with consonant+sure, consonant+sion, -tion)
• /zj/ → ʒ in words ending vowel+sure such as measure ˈmɛʒəɹ (also vowel+sion)

In some other words, the coalesced pronunciation is common in English dialects around the world, but an older non-coalesced form still exists among some speakers of standard British English:

• educate ˈɛdʒʊkeɪt (also in standard RP: ˈɛdjʊkeɪt)
• azure ˈæʒɚ (also in RP ˈæzjə)
• issue ˈɪʃuː (also in RP ˈɪsjuː), the intermediate form ˈɪʃjuː being also common

Coalescence can even occur across word boundaries, as in the colloquial "gotcha" /ˈɡɒtʃə/ (for got you /ˈɡɒtju/) and "whatcha" /ˈwɒtʃə/ (for what're you /ˈwɒtərjə/).

In certain English accents, yod-coalescence also occurs in stressed syllables, as in tune and dune. That occurs in Australian, Cockney, Estuary English, Zimbabwean English, some speakers of Hiberno-English, Newfoundland English, South African English, and to a certain extent^[16] in New Zealand English, RP,^[17] many speakers in Scottish English, and even some varieties of English in Asia, like Philippine English (many speakers because of the influence by the phonology of their mother languages). That results in pronunciations such as the following:

• dew/due dʒuː (RP: djuː)
• tune tʃuːn (RP: tjuːn)

In certain varieties such as Australian, Ugandan, and some RP,^[17] stressed sj, zj can also coalesce:

• resume ɹəˈʒuːm (RP: ɹɪˈzjuːm)
• assume əˈʃuːm (RP: əˈsjuːm)

That can lead to additional homophony; for instance, dew and due come to be pronounced the same as Jew.

Yod-coalescence has traditionally been resisted in Received Pronunciation. It has certainly become established in words of the first group listed above (nature, soldier, pressure etc.), but it is not yet universal in those of the second group (educate etc.), and it does not generally occur in those of the third group (dew, tune etc.).^[18]