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It's actually not a triphthong, because the r is not a vowel. Rather, it's a syllabic consonant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabic_consonant

The IPA represenation is not [ə], but rather [ɹ̩]. (There's a tick under that ɹ).

And, to be fair, your statements are accurate for British dialects of English that don't have syllable final rhotics, but the original article was about American English.

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The interpretation of the [aIə] as triphthong or diphthong varies according to one's source. For singers (I stated that my background was from diction as taught to singers), we tend to be taught that it's a triphthong, because for singing or stage diction, it's often desirable to not be saying an American "r" for seconds at a time...not a pleasing sound. The IPA symbol used varies as well, for the same reasons.

Of course, in some places in the South, "fire" has the same pronunciation as "far".

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