"drawer"

drawer- (one who draws) [dra:-..r] two syllables.
drawer- (furniture piece) [dro:r] one syllable.

Kerry,

I'm talking about "draw" and "drawer" (to put stuff in) in my accent. They might not be homophones for you but they are for me. Also I'm talking about "door" and "saw" in my accent too. They rhyme for me: /do:/ and /so:/.

Smith,

You're right. It's an intrusive /r/. Like you say, an intervocalic /r/ is just an /r/ between vowels. My mistake.

Thank you guys for your answers.

So in Jim's accent (an Australian one, I suppose)
draw - /dro:/
drawer(furniture) - /dro:/
drawer(artist) - /dro:r../
drawing - /dro:riN/

and in Kirk and Kerry's accent,
draw - /dra:/
drawer(furniture) - /dro:r/
drawer(artist) - /dra:..r/
drawing - /dra:iN/

I suppose there are some parts of the US or Canada where /a:/ and /o:/ haven't merged, anyone who has a rhotic accent who distinguishes /a:/ and /o:/? also, is there anyone who do not use intrusive r and has an non-rhotic accent?

and any further information would be appreciated. Thanks.

I'm not sure how to respond to that. We have certain words that are pronounced /o:/ as in "Florida" and others pronounced with /a:/ such as "sorry" [GAE]. So I guess rhotic speakers in the US still have the sounds /a:/ and /o:/ in their version of English. But then again, don't all versions of English have the sounds /a:/ and /o:/ present?

Tiffany, you're right about [o:] still existing before [r] (and it also exists in the diphthong [o:i] as in "boy") but at least for many US dialects it's not a contrastive sound...like for me of course I have [o:r] and [o:i] but [o:] cannot stand alone, as in "law" or "talk", which is always [la:] and [ta:k] for me.

But what about words like "low"? What would the representation for that be?

In my accent there's a restriction on [o:] that it can only occur before ''r''. So, pairs like ''card/cord'', ''far/for'', ''car/core'', ''farm/form'' etc. are easily distinguishable, but ''cot'' and ''caught'', ''pa'' and ''paw'', ''taught'' and ''tot'', ''don'' and ''dawn'' are homonyms.

''card'' and ''cord'' are distinguishable [ka:rd] and [ko:rd], but ''cot'' and ''caught'' and ''pa'' and ''paw'' are not, [ka:t] and [pa:] in my accent.

Kirk, What about ''Mary'', ''marry'' and ''merry''? Do you pronounce those the same way. In Scotland they're all pronounced differently.

In response to Tiffany's question, my "low" is pronounced [loU] (as is normal in American English, altho the [U] offglide isn't very prominent). I'm just the same as Smith. I say [ka:rd] and [ko:rd], but [ka:t] for "caught" and "cot" and [pa:] for "pa" and "paw".

"Mary", "marry", and "merry" are all the same for me...[mEri].

oops...for that last one I meant [meri]...forgot to use antimoon's method of transcription.

argh! I did it again! haha...and for "low" I meant [lOu]...you know what I meant...I wish we could use real IPA here :)

In Scotland,

Mary-[meiri]
marry-[m@ri]
merry-[meri].

Kirk, Here's a good sentence to show details about the cot-caught merger. How do you pronounce this sentence?

''What my father told the court he had wanted was not to be caught with a quart of water in the cot of his daughter all hidden away in the cart of his brother.''

Here's how I pronounce it,

[w^t mai fa:TH..r tOuld TH.. ko:rt hi: h@d w^ntid w^z na:t tu: bi: ka:t with .. ko:rt ^v wa:t..r in TH.. ka:t ^v hiz da:t..r a:l hid.n ..wei in TH ka:rt ^v hiz br^TH..r]

Kirk, what about the words ''fire'', ''flour'', ''coir'', ''oil'', ''owl'', ''tile'' and ''world''? How do you pronounce those? I pronounce them [fai..r], [flau..r], [koi..r], [oi..l], [au..l], [tai..l] and [we:r..d] with two syllables.