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diphthongs - How many syllables are in the word 'hour'?


Does the word 'hour' have 1 or 2 syllables?



Answer



From what I understand, hour, fire, hire, layer, rhythm, etc., are all examples of words which are not easily classifiable. But, according to this linguist,



Hour and fire are generally considered to be monosyllabic words containing a triphthong.



Wikipedia further confirms this in a couple of its articles.


Triphthong (WP):



English in British Received Pronunciation (monosyllabic triphthongs with R are optionally distinguished from sequences with disyllabic realizations)


[aʊ̯ə̯] as in hour (compare with disyllabic "plougher" [aʊ̯.ə])



(British) Received Pronunciation:



RP also possesses the triphthongs /aɪə/ as in ire, /aʊə/ as in hour, /əʊə/ as in lower, /eɪə/ as in layer and /ɔɪə/ as in loyal. There are different possible realisations of these items: in slow, careful speech they may be pronounced as a two-syllable triphthong with three distinct vowel qualities in succession, or as a monosyllabic triphthong. In more casual speech the middle vowel may be considerably reduced, by a process known as smoothing, and in an extreme form of this process the triphthong may even be reduced to a single vowel, though this is rare, and almost never found in the case of /ɔɪə/[47] . In such a case the difference between /aʊə/, /aɪə/, and /ɑː/ may be neutralised with all three units realised as [ɑː] or [äː].



All that said, I suspect that the most accurate answer ultimately depends on how you pronounce it yourself. Nice question :)


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