God, we’re a highly educated bunch.
Educated, but not always on point with our answers. #10 is the only one that actually addresses my question. Thanks Mahaloth.
Yorkshire Pudding, who I believe is British, answered it in #3, as well.
You could also go to Youtube and sample how various British cooks pronounce it. For example, Jamie Oliver says what to me as a US speaker sounds like RAIR-bit. Here’s Julie Bloomenthal pronouncing it, and it sounds more like “rab-bit,” but the “Welsh” also sounds different to my ears. Gordon Ramsey’s is similar, but sounds closer to “rair-bit” with a dropped “r” than “rabbit” to me ears; like the second time he says Welsh “rarebit,” I could almost swear I hear a soft r in there. This seems to me to be the pronunciation Yorkshire Pudding is describing. This Welsh chef pronounced it more like a clear “RAIR-bit.” As you can hear, it certainly varies depending on your accent.
The key to higher education is digression. Also rambling on about nonsense.
So checking with Cambridge Dictionary, it gives the non-rhotic pronunciation Yorkshire Bubble was describing:
/reə.bɪt/
So the vowel is a diphthong, like “reh-uh-bit” but imagine the eh-uh smooshed together. (And some American dialects also have this centering diphthong. Like I pronounce “air” with an /ɛə/ or /eə/ vowel, so far as I can tell.) “Rabbit” has the usual short “a” vowel in both US and UK English, which is /ae/.
I am indeed. British, Linguistics graduate from a Welsh University (so sorry about the lack of IPA), the whole nine yards. And in fact, had I not gone back to edit the damn thing, I’d have actually been the first response.