Wow, I understood completely up until the ellipsis…
So you pronounce “hair” like “harr”… Does that mean you pronounce “harr” with a long “a,” or do you pronounce “hair” without the long “a”?
Many people have problems hearing or voicing distinct unaccented short vowels, most often converting the sound to the ‘schwa e’ sound (i.e., ‘uh’).
E.g., we all know that ‘him’ and ‘hem’ are pronounced differently. But wind up pronouncing ‘compliment’ and ‘complement’ the same, as if they were ‘compluhment.’ It takes awareness and effort to pronounce them correctly (if one considers how a word is written as being important to pronunciation, rather than saying “well, that’s how I and everyone I know pronounce it.”).
So called ‘r controlled’ vowels are also difficult to differentiate.
BTW, I pronounce ‘aural’ as ‘AWE - dee - al.’ 
Peace.
It’s sort of a cross between short ‘e’ and long ‘a’… as in “air” (which, BTW, I pronounce the same as the verb “err”).
Regarding the OP, my Random House dictionary only lists one pronunciation for “aural”, which is the same as their main pronunciation for “oral” - the first vowel is O as in “order” (which is how I pronounce it). It lists an alternate pronunciation for “oral” which uses O as in “over”.
Does this mean you think the title of the song “Aura Lee” is actually “Orally”?
Every time you take vaccine,
take it orally.
As you know, the other way
is more painfully.
(Apologies to Allan Sherman)
Hell, where I live, we have trouble distinguishig “iron” from “I earn”.
<insert Grecian urn joke here>
“To whoever coined the term ‘aural’ …”
Captain Jack Sparrow That would be the French. [/Captain Jack Sparrow]
Aural and Oral are different in my neck of the woods, but Aaron and Erin are the same.
It is often harder to get whether it’s an Aaron or an Erin from context as in: My friend Erin and I are going to the movies.
My earlier post would have been funny if I hadn’t screwed up the coding.
And if it had been funny in the first place.
(I’m from NZ)
A bunch of us were watching Bring it On, as y’do. One the the guy’s is named Aaron, and every single one of us thought that he was called Erin. Dunno if that’s a ‘mer’kin accent or our noo zill’d one making it sound like that tho’
I have often wondered about the ‘aural’ thing … and then realized that I had never, ever heard it spoken.
Now, I can see why we might say “Erin” or “Aaron” or “hairy” or “merry” … but how often do people say “aural”?
I know I’m not going to say it again … I don’t know how to pronounce it any more!