Is "parker" ([ˈpʰɑ̈˞kɚ]) a common pronunciation of "parkour" in American English?

Question

I've recently had a small argument with a coworker about the pronunciation of parkour. Neither of us is a native speaker. She seems to believe "parker" (in narrow IPA, [ˈpʰɑ̈˞kɚ]) is the "correct" American pronunciation recognized by the Cambridge Dictionary website. And if you play the audio files here, she seems to be right, it sounds like "parker", not "parcore" (in narrow IPA, [ˈpʰɑ̈˞kɔ˞], rhyming with ore) or "parcoor" (in narrow IPA, [ˈpʰɑ̈˞kʊ̞ɚ], rhyming with poor) which is what I expected. I cross-checked this with the Oxford, Longman and Merriam-Webster websites, none of which seems to corroborate the Cambridge recording. Furthermore, the Cambridge website matches that single "parker" recording with two different transcriptions, /ˈpɑːr.kʊr/ (in narrow IPA, [ˈpʰɑ̈˞kʊ̞ɚ]) and /pɑːrˈkɔːr/ (in narrow IPA, [pʰɑ̈˞ˈkɔ˞]), even though the stress in the recording only matches the former transcription. I do have to consider the possibility of error here (badly edited audio, mismatch between sound and transcription), but I still wonder whether this recording could genuinely prove a common pronunciation of parkour, "parker", in American English.

The file name for the American recording at the Cambridge website is "e18us00017.mp3", used in both HTML elements for the speaker icons. I downloaded it, isolated the "our" part, and it really does sound like "er" ([ɚ]), not "ore" ([ɔ˞]) or "oor" ([ʊ̞ɚ]).

Update: Some of the answerers seem to think realizing /ʊr/ as [ɚ] could be a regionalism. I've highlighted the word common above, but I'd also like to stress that dictionaries like Oxford, Cambridge, Longman and Merriam-Webster are advanced learner's dictionaries. They should not reflect obscure regional accents, but only what is known as General American, a conflation of various Western and Midwestern accents that cannot be immediately identified as particularly regional. Basically, it's the "mainstream news anchor accent" that foreign learners think of as "American pronunciation" and model their own pronunciation after. Obviously regional realizations cannot be included in what is dubbed "general", and are definitely not included in dictionaries like Cambridge's which are intended for foreign learners.

Update 2: Here's a spectrogram of that recording:

Comparing the F1's of the second vowel with the first, they seem to have very similar quality, with the same near-mid height, and the first vowel seems slightly backer, perhaps [ʌ̈]. This tells me that it's highly likely that the second vowel is mid and central, thus [ɚ].

Answer 1

I strongly suspect this is just an error on Cambridge's part; at the very least, the recordings for /ˈpɑːr.kʊr/ and /pɑːrˈkɔːr/ should have put the stress on different syllables, and the potential merger between /ʊr/ and /ɘ˞/ generally only happens after certain consonants that do not include /k/ (see the section of this webpage on the "NURSE-CURE Merger"). Also: n=1, but I have a version of that merger of /ʊr/ with /ɘ˞/ and /ɔr/, and to me it sounds extremely odd to pronounce parkour with /-kɘ˞/ instead of /-kɔr/.

More generally, though, one would be wrong to think that Cambridge's recorded pronunciations are consistent in treating /ʊr/ as distinct from /ɘ˞/ and /ɔːr/. These mergers are certainly widespread enough to trip Cambridge up. For example, Cambridge uses the same recording for assure and ashore, even though their phonemic transcriptions claim that the former should have an /ʊr/ sound. Meanwhile, their recording for ensure actually does have a separate /ʊr/ sound--but their recording for endure doesn't, reflecting a merger with /ɘ˞/.

Edit: One note I posted in the comments: the British pronunciations Cambridge gives for assure and ashore have the exact opposite problem--the transcriptions are the same, but the recorded pronunciations are different! Of course, in Standard Southern British the relevant merger is a straightforward one between the sounds conventionally transcribed as /ʊə/ and /ɔː/.

Answer 2

There are dialects in the U.S. that do not use the vowel /ʊr/ or /ur/ (these are allophones). This is the vowel used in poor and tour in General American. These people pronounce toured either as turd or as the one-syllable pronunciation of toward. In these dialects, the second syllable of parkour would have to either use the vowel of cur or the vowel of core. The speaker in the Cambridge dictionary may speak one of these dialects.

For most words in these dialects, only one of the poor-purr and poor-pore mergers is valid. So people pronounce gourd as gored and never (or very rarely) gird, and people pronounce lure as lurr and never (or very rarely) lore. However, in uncommon words like parkour, people may not know which of these mergers to use, and might pick either one.

So in some sense, par-cur is a legitimate pronunciation; however, I expect that it is pronounced this way only by people who do not use the vowel of tour, and unless you speak one of these dialects, I strongly urge you not to use this pronunciation.

Finally, I want to say that the Cambridge Dictionary speaker is using the vowel of cur and not of parker. In General American, these differ only in stress, but her pronunciation puts secondary stress on kour; this is a subtle difference that non-native English speakers might not notice.

Answer 3

The term in English for this sport is parkour, not parker. The person who parks a car. So the British or American pronunciation of parker is incorrect.

Wikipedia

And it rhymes with poor. From the French: parcours

Here are three different pronunciations, two British and one American none of which rhyme with parker. The two British ones stress different syllables. forvo

Those forvo ones are pɔː AmE and BrE pʊə in standard IPA as in poor in both. But these are not all the possible allophones thereof.

British person who does parkour saying it: British parkour

American person who does parkour saying it: American parkour

More Americans and parkour: parkour in American English

Conclusion: Those who do the sport say it properly and do not say something that can be assimilated to "parker", or narrow IPA, [ˈpʰɑ̈˞kɚ]) as posted in the question.