Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
Yes, but links (top hits for the search term I used first) came up saying it was ah-oo "two syllables".

It did seem really weird to me too, and that's even with all the other things we've disagreed on.
Some dipthongs do in fact originate this way, where a syllable ending in a vowel merges with one starting with a vowel, e.g. [CV][VC][CV] => [CWC][CV], with the handy symbolism of the W as two conjoined Vs. The reasons why one word generates a dipthong and another fails to can be quite idiosyncratic.