Why do Southerners reverse W & H in words?

You are confusing spelling with pronunciation. The spelling in English is not equal to the pronunciation.

For some regional dialects in English, WH is pronounced the same as W, so why=y, and witch=which

For other regional dialects, WH is pronounced like HW, so there is a clear difference between WITCH and WHICH, WHY and Y, WHERE and WEAR.

It's not that one is right and one is wrong. They are just different, and each is considered correct in that area.

In modern American usage, “what” can be pronounced with either a simple “w” sound at the beginning, or with a breathier “hw” sound

In standard American dictionaries, like The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), both of those pronunciations are acceptable.

This wasn’t always true. Formerly, the latter pronunciation—it sounds something like HWUT—was preferred. For example, our 1956 copy of Webster’s New International Dictionary (the unabridged second edition), gives that as the only pronunciation.

But today, while both pronunciations are acceptable, the “hw” sound is losing ground. Most Americans have dropped the “h” sound at the beginning of “what” and other such words (“which,” “why,” “when,” “whim,” “white,” and so on).

These days, as you suggested, the “hw” sound is more likely to be heard in parts of the South than elsewhere in the country.

This trend away from the “hw” sound isn’t restricted to American English. Modern British usage favors an “h”-less pronunciation of “what” that sounds something like WOT.

The online Macmillan Dictionary, which has both British and American versions, gives both “w” and “hw” pronunciations for American usage but only one, the “h”-less version, for British usage. The Cambridge Dictionaries Online, which also has US and UK pronunciations, agrees.

As you might suspect, the “hw” pronunciation is the much older one. In fact, when “what” first showed up in Old English in the 700s, the word was spelled with an “h” in front: hwaet or huaet.

The British began losing the “h” sound in “what” long before Americans did, and even before the Colonies existed.

We found an interesting perspective on all this in Kate Burridge’s book Weeds in the Garden of Words (2005).

Burridge, an Australian linguist, writes, “Over the years English has been simplifying the clusters of consonants it allows, in particular the clusters that occur at the beginning of syllables.”

“We know that the change in pronunciation from ‘hw’ to ‘w’ started in the south of England as early as the Middle Ages, but it couldn’t have been a big hit, since the ‘hw’ cluster went across to North America in the 17th century,” she goes on to say.

In 18th-century England, Burridge adds, “the pronunciation ‘w’ was clearly gaining ground. It had even begun to creep into the speech of the educated, who had earlier condemned it.”

“By 1800 which and witch and whether and weather had become homophones in Standard English pronunciation,” she writes. “The cluster is managing to hang in there in places like Scotland and Ireland, but everywhere else it’s well and truly on the way out.”

http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2011/12/what-hwa...

It's down to regional variation in English.

Historically, words starting with "wh-" were generally pronounced "hw-" (a pronunciation left over from Old English). But over time, there's been a general trend called the "wine–whine merger", so that "wh-" becomes pronounced as "w-".

However, this hasn't happened uniformally, and the south-eastern USA is one area where "wh-" and "w-" are still distinguished.

There's a nice map at Wikipedia / Wine–whine merger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_...

Edit: Go with Doctor P's excellent answer expanding on this!

Words With W And H

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That is just the way they speak. Everyone has different accents. Just think if you were a Southerner talking like that would be normal. Southerners probably think that we talk funny for not putting emphisis on the h.