Discussion Groups / English Usage / June 2010

Not by me. Well, I suppose I might use it in informal speech when I
speak rapidly and slur the words together, but that's not standard speech.

<BrE> The sound that it represents is certainly common on this side of
the pond. But the your would also be shortened to a schwa so perhaps
What'r'y'r [What-uh(r)-yer]. I have no problem with abbreviation in
reported speech, I wouldn't write it in any other context.

I don't know how you tell if someone was saying "what're" or was
saying "what are" unless the person had crystal-clear diction.

In normal writing, I wouldn't flinch at "what're".  I wouldn't expect
to see it in a high-brow literary magazine, but it's not totally
unacceptable.  

What is "standard"?  "Standard", to me, is "what most people use
and/or accept".  I think that some words can be "standard" in this
sense, but not acceptable in formal writing.  After all, most people
never have occasion to write something that must pass muster as formal
writing.

"Standard" may be an unhelpful term.  Written "what're"
is regular so far as it follows the writing convention of
an apostrophe to indicate letters omitted from writing or
(in direct speech) syllables not vocalized although implicit
in the grammar.  Cf. also
what's for what is
they're for they are
and so on.

Calling this "standard" implies a norm (which does not
exist or is nowadays repudiated.)   Calling this "regular"
merely describes fairly uniform habits of writing or speech
that are repeated in various differing contexts in the same way.