Anglo Mango's Guide to Ham Pronunciation

So English people like to pronounce things in strange ways completely unrelated to the way in which they are spelled, and then laugh at you when you then pronounce the word phonetically. Like somehow they've managed to trick you and you've given a clear display of inferior American intelect. But alas I have come to realize that we should just be laughing at them for their clear inability to know exactly what to do with the word ham.

Ham as a meat is basically the same. 'Hello, I'd like a ham sandwich' is a equally understood universal phrase. Then things get tricky. While the big-based lunch meat is the same, I have yet to see anything resembling a honey-baked ham style, um, ham. The Anglos love their pork, so it's clearly consumed, but I've come to the conclusion that they refer to this sort of ham as gammon steak. This may be something else entirely, but let's just roll with that for now.

Ham is also an extremely common inclusion in place names. From my limited understanding, this comes from the shortening of the word 'hamlet'. So perhaps Hamlet of Hurling becomes Hurlingham. And again while the ham in hamlet is fair play to all, if you ask someone how to get to Hurling-ham they'll likely either laugh at you, shake their head in disgust, or slap you (maybe not). After all, it is OBVIOUSLY pronounced Hurling-um. And Fulham is pronounced Ful-um. Fair enough, some consistency there.

So there you, when ham is at the front a word, it's ham ('Hamp-sure'), when it's at the back of a word it's um. In the middle you would generally have ham again, ('South-hamp-tun'). And while we're at it, shire is indeed pretty consistently 'sure'. And let's just cut to the chase - Liecester is lester, Liecestershire is lester-sure. But I think that's just because nobody can think of a better way to pronounce Liecester.