a common utterance in our house, always with two syllables: fune-rall. A lot of the people I grew up with in rural Texas went to fune-er-alls, but then again they would put random extra syllables in everything they said, so I didn't pay much attention.
Today I was reading a critique of David Tennant's dodgy American accent in Gracepoint, which the writer said wasn't so bad compared with Benedict Cumerbatch's in August: Osage County. Her comment:
Benedict Cumberbatch's Oklahoma accent made me stuff my knees into my mouth to keep from yelling "Why are you pronouncing 'funeral' with two syllables as if you've arrived directly from Harrow?! You JUST HEARD Chris Cooper pronounce it with three!"
Harrow!! WTF? My parents might have had some exposure to Harrovian accents via BBC on the "wireless", but Mom grew up somewhere in the bowels of Scranton, and my dad came from Big Spring and went to Texas A&M, which ain't Oxford to say the least.
I guess my question is, how do you say "funeral", two syllables or three? Where did you grow up? I'm really curious as to whether my family was an outlier or whether Erica Buist is sadly mistaken as to regional accents, and Cumberbatch was speaking fairly good Texas del Norte.
Another question might be, what is the absolute worst American accent you have heard out of a Brit? Everyone knows it's hard to fake a British one, just ask Dick Van Dyke.