Here's a source that describes a case for both one syllable or two and he favors two. It's worth reading the whole blog entry if one is interested in phonetics. Triphthongs anyone? It made me think of the word, girl. It's easier to hear that as one syllable, but many Spanish speakers whose English is their second language have a hard time pronouncing the word, girl and it comes out as two syllables.
This video might be of interest to the thread. Not gonna say it'll help but it might be interesting. Anyway I'm from the SE US and fire is definitely one syllable to me. My accent ain't as broad as some so I don't so much say 'fahr' as 'fehr' ... and half the time it's more like 'fie' ... look I never said we were any good at talkin'. I pronounce liar, dire, ire and such all as one syllable too, but also stuff like higher and buyer. Like, 'hire' and 'higher' and indistinguishable if I'm feeling lazy about talking, though I know that 'properly' they're distinct. I think that's cool. English is a mess. Accents are fun.
Loved that video, especially the point that syllables are fungible. And the , "bring me food, slave".
The word fire is monosyllabic (one syllable) or disyllabic (two syllables) depending on the pronunciation
