On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 10:53:40 -0800, Peter Kirk wrote:I guess you are right, except of course for West Ham etc where -ham is not a suffix but the main word. (No doubt the h in Westham, Sussex is silent.) Well, the West Ham locals probably don't pronounce the h as they drop all h's, but it is pronounced in the football reports.
There are minimal pairs at the syllable level between the British pronounciation of Birmingham (silent h, stress on first syllable only) and many similar -ingham names, and (rarer) place names like Odiham (Hampshire) - although I suspect the h tends to be silent in the latter.
Pronounced "odium" locally. Offhand I can't think of any English placenames with a -ham suffix that don't have a silent "h" (Farnham, Fareham, Wokingham ...), although "h" is generaly pronounced in other common placename suffixes such as -hampton and -hurst.
Andrew
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The h in -ham doesn't even affect the pronunciation of a preceding s or t, which usually remains [s], [z] or [t]. Contrast Witham, Essex, [wÉtmÌ] , with the river Witham in Lincolnshire [wÉÃmÌ], but this may not be the -ham suffix at all. (Or maybe it is local dialect; Grantham, Lincs also has an interdental fricative [Î] but this is probably originally Grant-ham.)
As for Birmingham, I like the idea of analysing it as a monosyllable [bÉmÅm] although I would tend to think of the eng and the second m as syllabic, but there is then a near minimal pair with the interjection [mhm] meaning "no".
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) http://www.qaya.org/
