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[Robin Hamilton]

I'd pronounce "fear" as a diphthong too, I think.

But interestingly, when I was searching for minimal pairs where I'd pronounce
the vowel differently (at least, inside my head -- a tape-recorder might beg to
differ, which is one among several reasons why I was always rotten at
phonetics), I came up with peer/pier vs. pair/pare, and purse vs. parze, but for
the life of me, the best I could manage for a monosyllabic version of "-per" was
the quasi-Latin  "as per usual".

Does English only allow "per" as a bound prefix?

Sort of why I thought "Merry Mary married hairy Harry" (a marriage made in hell)
might be relevant to the issue.

Robin

> 
>     On 04 November 2016 at 16:57 Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> 
> 
>     FWIW, for me, the vowel in “McPherson” is a monophthong, but “fear” is
> either disyllabic or the vowel is a diphthong. BB
> 
>     > On 4 Nov 2016, at 01:57, Robin Hamilton
>     > <robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM> wrote:
>     >
>     > In my idiolect, it rhymes with "person", not "purse on" or "fearsome".
>     >
>     > Are we into Mary's Marriage territory here?
>     >
>     > Robin
>     >
>     >>
>     >> I used to say "fur" because I saw a movie with a character named
>     >> "MacPherson" who was called "manFURson" by the other characters. But it
>     >> seems to me that, in real life, most people say "macFEERson."
>     >>
> 
> 
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>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org