In 2nd grade I got in a huge debate with my teacher because I missed one problem on the English test. "How many syllables is 'fire?'" I put 2. She said 1.

Now at my family get-together I had this same debate with my cousin who has a degree in English, and my aunt who is a Mrs.Smartypants irl. So I say it's 2 "F ī - e r" and they say it's one "F ī r"

So, please, tell me what you guys think. Here is my argument: Fire comes from the German "Feuer" which is pronounced roughly the same and is obviously 2 syllables. Also "higher" is unanimously 2 syllables, while "hire" is just like fire and supposedly 1? Higher and hire sound the same! They can't be different. I researched this online, and it appears it's split 50-50, with dictionaries and Southerners (mostly Texans) saying it's 1, and northerners saying it's 2. An interesting thing I found while debating this is that "boil" is 2 syllables, but "boiling" is also 2. And "child" is 2 as well, while "children" is 2. Unless you're a southern hick and pronounce them "bole" and "chald"

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

This is the kind of stuff that doesn't matter once we're all gone from this Earth, lol

2 syllables.

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Fire is one syllable. Same with hire. Hire and higher may sound alike but they dont sound exactly the same. With higher you sound it out as high and then -er. As hire you sound it out as all one. Same with fire. :D

It is 1 syllable according to all 3 dictionaries i have at home. sorry whisp looks like your 2nd grade teacher was right at least in the eyes of webster

The way your pronunciation is in your mind you read it as fi - er. Same with hire you precieve that as Hi - er.

ive checked 3 dictionaries,
one says two syllables
two say one syllable

i just find it interesting. i really think the majority of dictionaries have it wrong. higher and hire do sound identical. people have to keep in mind the english language has tons of words that dont sound exactly how theyre spelled. "hire" for instance has a hidden vowel sound in between i and r. that vowel sound creates a second syllable even though no letter is there to represent it.

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

Your pronouncing hire wrong. Your going on what people say instead of how it sounds. Like potato can sound different from different people. If people around you have sounded out hire as it were 2 syllables all your life then you are going to visualize that in your head. When you go from the I to the R you want to make it a new syllable however keep in mind that the English language is entirely fucked up. :D

Look in the Oxford English Dictionary. Whatever's there is the correct one.

fire (fīr), in every place i have checked.

Also, In the case of the pair of words for “fire,” English has descendants of both, one inherited directly from Germanic, the other borrowed from Latin. Our word fire goes back to the neuter member of the pair. In Old English “fire” was f[ymacr]r, from Germanic *fūr. The Indo-European form behind *fūr is *pūr, whence also the Greek neuter noun pūr, the source of the prefix pyro–. The other Indo-European word for fire appears in ignite, which is derived from the Latin word for fire, ignis, from Indo-European *egnis. The Russian word for fire, ogon' (stem form ogn–), and the Sanskrit agni–, “fire” (deified as Agni, the god of fire), also come from *egnis, the active, animate, and personified word for fire.

(The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2004, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. )

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http://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/fire

http://www.ultralingua.net/index.html?s ... &text=Fire

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define. ... 9024&ph=on

http://evaeaston.com/pr/r-pat-2syl.html

http://web7.mit.edu/CS/Art/wl-4.pdf#sea ... or%20two?'

http://www.wordsmyth.net/live/home.php? ... type=exact


My point is there isn't a mutual agreement among experts. You can pronounce it "Fi-ur" or "Far" but if you really want to make it one syllable and still have the "I" sound, the r becomes completely muted and it sounds like "Fie" with a very very soft r after it that doesnt have any vocal sound to back it up. R needs the UH transition in front of it to give it vocal sound if it is coming after the I sound.

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

OED is the final say in all these sorts of discussions. Heh.

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/fire

oxford doesnt say syllable number

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

It's the compact. lol Go to the library.

http://www.oed.com

i don't have time to look at it carefully right now, but from what i could get in about 30 seconds it looks like it is pronounced with one syllable, sometimes two when used in poetry, as lots of words can have syllables added to them to make the poem flow better

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how do you do a word search without having to pay for a subscription?

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

I do not think you can do that without a subscription. Guess we will have to wait for someone that has access to finish the debate lol.

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Ya, poets play with the syllables of words very often. Which is why you'll see words spelt differently in them sometimes, it's either to add syllables or to shorten them.

not like what oxford says is the final word to me anyway

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

I think when written down, the word "fire" is one syllable, but when spoken out loud, we pronounce two syllables. Whisp is right, we pronounce a hidden vowel.