It seems whenever orange is spoken, it is spoken as one syllable. But it appears to be two.
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary transcribes the pronunciation of orange as follows:
\ˈär-inj, ˈär(-ə)nj; chiefly Northern & Midland ˈȯr-inj, ˈȯr(-ə)nj\
So, does this mean it could it be either? If so, I am interested in knowing if any regional varieties of English have been established to pronounce orange one way or the other, and if so which regions and how do they pronounce it.
Being from central Alabama and having family in central Illinois, I almost exclusively hear "arnj" (IL) and "ornj" (AL). I have heard some people in AL pronounce it "orenj", but they say it quickly so it comes off as "ornj".
Best Answer
To judge from the dialect that Andy Griffith uses when he says "big orange drink" (at roughly 0:35, 0:48, 3:03 of the video) in his comedy piece "What It Was Was Football," at least some people in rural northwestern North Carolina pronounce orange as a single drawled syllable that resembles "arnj." Griffith was from Mount Airy, North Carolina, close to the border with Virginia.
In southeast Texas and central California, I've heard some people pronounce orange as if it were spelled "ornj." But I've also heard many people in both places pronounce the word as two syllables ("orenj")and in Maryland and New York I've heard a different two-syllable pronunciation (akin to "arenj"). The upshot of all this is that pronunciations of orange vary considerably in the United States. Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, for example, lists four principal pronunciations:
If you've never heard the two-syllable ˈȯr(-ə)nj pronunciation in the wild, you can click the audio button on that page to hear it loud and clear.