My entire life, including 3+ decades in law enforcement, it’s been pronounced *HAIR-OH-IN *.
In about the last 2 years or so I’ve been hearing it pronounced “HAR-OH-IN”, “HAR-OH-INE”, “HUR-WINE”, “HORE-WIN”, and even “HORE-OH-WINE”.
I want to stress that this isn’t meant as slang and isn’t accented dialect. This is pronunciation I heard from judges and attorneys in court. Yesterday I heard a radio add for a rehab center and the voice over pronounced it “HAR-YOU-IN” (rhymed with ARE YOU IN).
I first started noticing this in about January of 2011 when a new officer had found a tiny baggy on someone he searched incident to arrest and he said “I think this is HARWIN”. I said “It’s what?”. He said “I bet when it’s tested it’s HARWIN. Isn’t that how it’s said? HARWIN?”
Ever since then I’ve been noticing the odd pronunciations for it from all types of people. And it’s not just me. I’ve had other veterans mention how people are saying it. This shits been around forever. Why all of a sudden are people unsure how it’s pronounced.?
I knew a guy in college who was seriously addicted to heroine, stories involving girl protagonists. It was better than heroin - legal and doesn’t mess you up so much.
Those spellings indicate quite different pronunciations, especially in the vowels. If you think they are the same, we probably can’t predict what pronunciations you intend to indicate by your own spellings.
I have heard “HAIR-on” or “HURR-on” a few times. Almost like the bird. Pretty much only from somewhat uneducated black people in the South, though. I would certainly expect a cop to pronounce the word in a more standard manner.
I disagree with you and Colibri, and agree with DataX. In my accent (suburbs of New York City), it’s impossible to pronounce your first example differently than your third one. The two IPA renderings given by others in this thread are pronounced very similarly, and both seem to me to be equally represented by your first and third renditions.
You can if you know anything about English pronunciation and the Mary, merry, marry merger. The fact that you don’t know this probably indicates that you are not going to be able to answer the question factually, although you might be able to add IMHO-style anecdotes.
What’s really funny are people who have the merger but still insist they sound different.
I personally cannot find a pronunciation in a dictionary that is not caused by a known merger or variation (such as the British variation on the long O). I could maybe understand a two syllable version that sounded like HERR-win or HAIR-win, where the reduced vowel in the middle is elided, but that’s about it.
Her-rowin, hair-rowin’, and heh rowin’, all have three distinct vowels to me, with the first and last being the most distinct in my dialect (I’m wondering what vowel the speakers who pronounce them the same merge them to.) “Her” sound like “hurr,” which is to say /ɜ/ is the vowel in IPA. In “heh,” the vowel is /ɛ/, or what we called a “short e” in grammar school. “Hair” has the diphthong /ɛə/, although in my Chicago accent, the vowel is probably closer to /æ/. It’s sometimes a bit difficult to hear what you’re pronouncing in your own accent. My accent does merge Mary-merry-marry, but I am able to pronounce them distinctly if I want to. It’s just terribly unnatural for me.
”. He said “I bet when it’s tested it’s HARWIN. Isn’t that how it’s said? HARWIN?”