Er, neither really, 'val-you'. Two syllables, definitely not three, but there is a 'y'.

Rhymes with pew, few, you, new, yew, Kew, etc.

Fair enough. Yes, two syllables, but there's a sound between the "val" and the "oo" parts.

If I see "loo" absent context I would normally pronounce it without that intervening sound. Whereas "lieu" has it.

For me that intervening sound is a hard 'y' though (as in 'yes') not long 'ee'.

Now I'm confused over whether Kivaloo is '~oo' as I assumed, or (roughly, weaker 'y') '~yoo' as I think we agree 'lieu' is?

It's pronounced "key-value". The "kee-va-lieu" thing was a joke. ;-)

How do you pronounce “solder”?

saw-dur.

That is what I am accustomed to. However, Mr. Carlson of Mr. Carlson's lab pronounces it "soll-der". https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU9SoQxJewrWb_3GxeteQPA

I was wondering if that is a common Canadian pronounciation.

Wow, it's never occurred to me anyone would pronounce that much differently (Am/Can pronunciation of 'r' in 'er's aside)! UK is 'soll-duh', or I suppose 'sohl-duh', but certainly sounding the 'l'.

Wiktionary suggests Canada generally follows the pronunciation your familiar with.

Yes, generally that is true. There are a few words, at least out west, that stand out: "About" "Schedule" "America".

The last one is in jest. The word is pronounced the same--in the US, often the US is called America, seemingly excluding Canada, Central America, South America.

And a fact that I didn't know until recently was that the Philippines prior to WW II was part of the United States. See "How to hide an empire" by Daniel Immerwahr: https://www.amazon.com/How-Hide-Empire-History-Greater/dp/03...

I'm ashamed to admit I didn't get the connection of the name to "key value" until this comment. So do you yourself pronounce it kee va loo or kee va lyoo? As an American, I see no distinction between the sounds of 'loo' and 'lieu'.

Also American, I pronounce loo /lu/ and lieu /lyu/, in IPA.

I do commonly hear the expression "in lieu of" rendered "in loo of" but have always considered that incorrect, much like pronouncing the t in "often".

It is, of course, just dialect, and the entire idea of 'incorrect pronunciation' is suspect! But I can't help but consider /lyu/ to indicate a higher, er, register.

The standard American pronunciation of lieu is "loo". Some people who read the word before ever hearing it (it’s a rare word in ordinary speech, more common in writing), or maybe took a high school French class and want to sound fancy, say something like "lyoo" instead, but this is non-standard and uncommon. (Neither of the two is a correct pronunciation in French.)

I think it really depends on where you're from. I've been hopelessly trying to teach my wife 'perfect' English pronunciation at her request, and the best advice I came up with is to talk with your throat and not your mouth. At least in the Southeast, this works almost perfectly. But we say 'loo' if anything at all, it's a pretty rare word.

From my experience, the more north you go the more you talk with your tongue/mouth. In my examples I was almost able to complete full sentences without moving my lips at all.