Does the word ''fire'' have two syllables?

Does the word ''fire'' have two syllables? fie-er?

I think so.

i pronounce it with one syllable. it sounds almost the same as the word far.

Q-cumber, do you really pronounce ''fire'' the same way as ''far''? I pronounce ''fire'' as ''fie-er'' [fai-..r] and ''far'' as ''fahr'' [fa:r].

I pronounce it in a non-rhotic way, as "faiah", with an /aI/ sound and a schwa in the end, still for me it is one syllable rather than two (because the schwa is a relatively weak vowel). In a rhotic accent it seems to me to be definitely one syllable.

I pronounce it as two syllables: /fai-../.

It is really difficult for me to decide, for me breaking it into two syllables seems a little artificial, and prosodically it seems to be one syllable - well, maybe one and a half, because of the schwa in non-rhotic speech. This may be due to the diphthong which may almost be molded into one long consonant in whatever dialect. It depends on how long the dipthong is pronounced, I think- if it is shorter, the second part is more prominent.

Yes, for most people, as Jim says. Unless you went to a posh public school, you live in a mansion in Surrey, and Daddy is something big in the City, in which case you would simply say "fah".

> Yes, for most people, as Jim says. Unless you went to a posh public
> school, you live in a mansion in Surrey, and Daddy is something big in
> the City, in which case you would simply say "fah".

Or, at the other end of the spectrum, if you're a poor American Southern farmer, in which case you say /far/ (or /f@r/).