Interesting. So syrup rhymes with stirrup for you? I pronounce it ‘sear-up’. I pronounce turquoise the same way you do.
I say Syrup rhymes with stirrup.
I asked about turquoise because I’m listening to Angelica Huston read her memoir A story lately told and she says
Tur- kwaaz for turquoise. Caught me by surprise. Like the British bakers saying
Or-eh-gawno for oregano!
“Stirrup” I’m as likely to say as “stear-up.” I think the vowel in both those words floats a bit for me, from an /i/ to an /ɪ/, depending on how I’m feeling, but definitely not as long as an /i:/ as in “sear.” The dictionary pronunciations I see do seem to all have /ɪ/ primarily as the initial vowel. There’s no see-rup that I could find.
Once in awhile, I will use the “sir”+“up” pronunciation just for fun. (“Sir” there as in “sir” vs “ma’am.”)
I find it surprising the way Brits pronounce ‘pasta’. Most Americans (I think) pronounce it the way I would think the Brits should- ‘pah-sta ‘. But the Brits pronounce the first ‘a’ like the ‘a’ sound in the word ‘pat’.
I really think the Brits are just screwing with us sometimes with their wacky pronunciations and emPHAsis on the wrong syLLAbles. But it is their language after all, and besides, they’re so darn cute. 
I do quite enjoy the way they pronounce schedule (SHED-jewl) .
I think I say spare and perry the same.
That’s Mary and Merry. I say them differently.
Classy! 
One problem with some of the answers is that I have no idea how you pronounce perry. FWIW, I say something like ek-SPUR-uh-mnt with the continuant n replacing the final vowel and uh representing a schwa. For experience, I say ek-SPEAR-ee-ens. I’m from Philly and we don’t merge any two of Mary, marry, merry, although the last is homophonous with Murray (and perry and purry also identical).
Yep, that’s the Merry-Murray merger (which it sounds like you might be aware of) that is common in specifically Philadelphia accents.
Almost.
The Bonzo Dog Band makes it clear that it’s eks-perr-ee-ment.
I’m gonna get you in my tent, tent, tent, tent, tent
Where we can both experiment, ment, ment, ment, ment
Yeah, yeah it’s so convenient, ent, ent, ent, ent
Let’s take a taxi to my tent
Haha, as soon as I saw the thread title, I knew the Mary-marry-merry merger would come up, and as a native Philadelphian I agree with you. I can’t get over how much of the country pronounces all three of those words the same.
Yep, it’s most of the country: 57%. And only 17% pronounce all three differently (the rest pronounce two of them the same, one different.)
Meanwhile, I can’t understand how much of the country doesn’t distinguish “cot” from “caught” or “Don” from “Dawn” when speaking. They are like totally different vowels! On is AHHH, the other AWWWW! (Which, of course, means nothing to those in the merger.) Such is dialect.
Now I’m really flummoxed.
Turquoise not pronounced 'tur-kwoize"? It’s a world gone mad.
Can you name any other English word (not borrowed) with a quo that is not pronounced as kwo?
I’m not sure how you pronounce it , but I’ve always heard it like this or this (US version) and I definitely do not hear a “w” in there but I do hear an “r”.
I guess I always pronounced it the British way. I guess you’re seeing the word split as turq-uoise.
For me it’s tur-quoise. Quoise would be pronounced kw-oiz; the quo being like the beginning of quote.
Liquor
Touche (don’t know how to put the accent mark on this). And it is kinda strange that Liquor is an exception to that quo pronunciation, Unless it’s a bastardization of the French “liqueur”.
The word in English goes back to 1200 spelled as likur, which does share etymology with liqueur.
It’s the only word that I could see, unless you count the liquorice spelling of licorice where quo is pronounced with a k instead of a kw.