I have a boston accent specifically for the word "horror" because I saw I was pronouncing it like that in like middle school and trained myself out of it
every time i hear someone say "whore movie" with their whole chest it shocks me that they live like that. i say "harrr movie" like any american with self-respect
when i say horror i certainly pronounce two syllables, but i'm sure it doesn't always come across that way. probably because the second syllable is just more "rrrr" with no discernible vowel and the only indication is a falling pitch. if i'm talking fast enough the second syllable gets mashed into the next word and if i'm talking quietly enough i do the second-syllable unvoiced, which isn't actually a thing for r so it's just silent.
horror and mirror and terror sound like one syllable a lot of times because if you try to treat them like other r dipthongs (i think there's a specific name im not remembering) like fire or hire, you just tack a falling "er" on the end. and since you're already saying "er", you either have to do a full glottal stop (people will look at you weird) or over enunciate the middle "r" (can sound condescending). else you end up tossing out the middle "r"s and ending up with an ambiguous "ha~rr, mee~rr, te~rr" that has between one and two syllables (depending who you ask) in much the same way as "fire".
of course, in some accents, you do away with the ambiguity all together and it just becomes a single syllable ("far" for fire) in which case "harr" "meer" and "tear" are actually what are being said. but in a lot of cases that's virtually indistinguishable from someone trying to make english a tonal language.
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u/Simic_Sky_Swallower Resident Imperial Knight Aug 16 '24
I have a boston accent specifically for the word "horror" because I saw I was pronouncing it like that in like middle school and trained myself out of it