From: Andrew C. West (andrewcwest@alumni.princeton.edu)
Date: Wed Feb 04 2004 - 05:13:58 EST
On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 10:53:40 -0800, Peter Kirk wrote:
>
> 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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