Some parts of the South, including the part of Kentucky I grew up in, "here" gets pronounced in the UK manner with the schwa and without the 'r' (and as two syllables), while "hear" gets pronounced in the US manner without the schwa but with the 'r'.
Answer from Sean Duggan on Stack Exchangehear
/hîr/
intransitive verb
- To perceive (sound) by the ear. Can you hear the signal?
- To learn by hearing; be told by others. I heard she got married.
- To listen to (something) attentively or in an official capacity, as in a court. heard the last witness in the afternoon.
pronunciation - Do “here” and “hear” have the same phonetic transcription in the same country? - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Pronunciation of ‘hear’ in South African English and RP
pronunciation: here, hear, ear [rhyme?] | WordReference Forums
pronunciation - British politicians pronouncing "hear, hear" oddly - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Videos
Some parts of the South, including the part of Kentucky I grew up in, "here" gets pronounced in the UK manner with the schwa and without the 'r' (and as two syllables), while "hear" gets pronounced in the US manner without the schwa but with the 'r'.
In standard US English they are pronounced the same. I've heard Southerners pronounce "hear" as two syllables with the "r" silent, as in, "Y'all come back now, yuh he-ah."
I'm surprised by Sean's statement of Kentuckians pronouncing "here" as two syllables but "hear" as one, because, as I say, the only dialect I've ever heard had it the other way around. But I've never lived in the South, only passed through now and then, so maybe there are multiple, mutually-confusing dialects down there. :-)
I often hear ‘hear’ pronounced with a yod (“hjear” - sorry, not too familiar with IPA) in South African English. I think I’ve heard this in conservative RP occasionally as well (with a different vowel, obviously).
Is this an older feature of English that’s been lost? Is it just a development in these accents? Is it actually a feature of RP or have I misheard?
Thanks guys, appreciate your help.
The speaker featured at the referenced moment is Kirsten Oswald, a member of the Scottish National Party. Seated near her are other Scottish MPs such as Alex Salmond, the former leader of the Scottish National Party. It is this grouping of Scottish MPs who are calling out "hear, hear" in support of Ms Oswald, and it is the Scottish accent that gives rise to the unusual sounding pronunciation being noted in your question.
An English accent will pronounce hear, hear in a manner more familiar to American ears.
(The debate appear to be taking place in a committee room located in the Palace of Westminster.)
I think you are probably hearing a version with a semivowel /j/ followed by word-final schwa, which Geoff Lindsey says is a current variant of the "NEAR" vowel in British English. This would not be a speech impediment.
Lindsey's blog post The demise of ɪə as in NEAR (April 21, 2012) says
In the earlier standard/reference accent of British English, Received Pronunciation, words like NEAR contained a centring diphthong, ɪə. This was a vowel which glided from the lax quality ɪ to the quality ə within a single syllable. [...] Although British dictionaries still use “/ɪə/” in their transcriptions, a lax diphthong of this type is now rather old-fashioned.
Contemporary NEAR
In contemporary Standard Southern British (SSB), we hear tend to hear either
a long pure vowel, the monophthong ɪː; or
a form in which the tense FLEECE vowel is followed by schwa, which we could write as ɪjə or, with traditional symbols, as /iːə/; this form can plausibly be considered to comprise two syllables.
Many speakers use both forms. For such speakers, NEAR is what John Wells has termed varisyllabic, and the long monophthong in (1) can be thought of as derived from the disyllable in (2) by ‘smoothing’.
The blog post has a number of audio examples you can listen to.
Edit: I think the audio in the Youtube video linked to in the question does sound a bit like the sound file in Lindsey's blog post, although maybe some of the speakers also have final consonantal /r/. I can't exactly tell. The woman who is speaking most of the time in that section of the video certainly does have consonantal /r/ in this environment, since she seems to have a Scottish accent, but I don't know if all the other people saying "hear, hear" have the same accent she does.
A Scottish accent of course is not "southern British," but I think the / ɪjə/ pronunciation Lindsey mentions may exist to some extent outside of the South as well (or /ɪjər/ with a final consonantal /r/).