Great article, and this passage on “whoa” vs “woah” cracked me up, but “woah” does have more of a phonetic thing going for it. Since “whoa” is already informal, I see no issue with innovating it.

The “wh” digraph in the English language carries its own pet peeve for me. Most speakers nowadays will make the ‘h’ completely silent, but an audible minority will sneak in that breathy ‘h’ sound, usually before the ‘w’, as in “H-what”, or “H-whale”.

So annoying.