'Falcon' or 'Fall-con'

Solution 1:

In the UK, it is nominally fall-con, but in practice that means that people with non-RP (received pronunciation) dialects pronounce it in their corresponding versions-- fælkən in the North of England, falkən in the Southwest, etc. Dictionaries list only one pronunciation for British English, and in the past other dialects were essentially considered "wrong". The modern view is that you're saying it right as long as your pronunciation transposes into the dictionary form, based on your dialect.

However, it's not uncommon for UK speakers to pronounce proper nouns, or words they only hear from speakers of other dialects, in ways that are not the default for their dialect. For example, an English person who generally says fɔlkən might well refer to an F-15 Falkən. There's quite a lot of latitude in UK vowel sounds.

(Consonants are a different story; many regional variations, like London's /θ/ → /f/ and Newcastle's /t/ → /ʔ/, are still often looked down upon)

Solution 2:

No one will bat an eye if you refer to the bird with either pronunciation, but the Ford automobile is never FALL-con. (US)

Solution 3:

The word falcon, when it first appeared in Middle English, was spelt and pronounced l-lessly: faucon, faukun, faucoun. The l was added in the 15th century to accord with Latin, and presumably the pronunciation changed (for some speakers at least) subsequently. Faucon is still the word in modern French, and is pronounced /fokɔ̃/.

The OED offers two pronunciations, the traditional RP pronunciations: /ˈfɔːlkən/ (roughly "fawlken" for those who haven't bothered to learn the IPA) and /ˈfɔːk(ə)n/ ("fawken").

However, the OED's entry hasn't been "fully" updated since it was written in the 19th century, and more recent British dictionaries offer different pronunciations:

• Oxford Living Dictionaries (BrE version) has /ˈfɒlk(ə)n/ ("folken" with an English, not American, short "o") and /ˈfɔː(l)k(ə)n/ (shorthand for the two variants given in the OED)
• Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (BrE version) has /ˈfɒlkən/ ("folken" again)
• Collins has /fɔːlkən/ ("fawlken") and /fælkən/ ("falken" with the short "a" of "cat")

American dictionaries give these pronunciations:

• Merriam-Webster and American Heritage both offer non-IPA transcriptions equivalent to /ˈfælkən/, /ˈfɔ(:)lkən/, and /ˈfɔ(:)kən/
• Cambridge (AmE version) has /ˈfælkən, ˈfɔl-/ ("falken" with a short "a", and "fawlken")

It seems a range of pronunciations are possible in both countries, although all American sources put /ˈfæl·kən/ first (which is sometimes an indicator that it is the most common or most widely accepted option, although this isn't infallible), while British sources vary.

Even though all the pronunciations are used and heard, this doesn't mean all will be equally accepted by everyone. At least in Britain, it's not entirely unknown for people to make fun of (or make secret judgements about) others' pronunciations if they are unfamiliar with them or if they think they sound too "posh" or too "common" or too northern or too southern.

Solution 4:

A native American born before WWII, I have always pronounced 'falcon' FALL-k'n and that was how I had always heard it pronounced too, until Ford Motors introduced the Falcon, which Ford ads pronounced FAL-k'n. Chevrolet introduced a car spelled 'Vega' which Chevrolet ads called 'VEE-g'(u)h'. Must be a Detroit thing.

Maybe Falcon's 1st pronunciation struck some as too highbrow, but then too some also pronounce Venezuela as 'Ven-eh-ZOO-la'.

Are reasonable people to let ignoramuses try to misinform everybody with claims of how real people really do everything? Such turkeys become instant experts with facts and usages they mislearned only shortly before.

How about informed people?

In my stab at laying out Falcon's pronunciation a schwa should be the 2nd and 4th syllables' vowel sound. My computer does not type schwas.