For Pete’s sake, the correct word is

It’s a regional thing. I’m midwestern, so I pronounce caramel as car-mul. Care-a-mel sounds pretentious and wrong to me.

Since we’re on the subject, insurance is not INsurance. No emphasis on the in. Also, preventive. PREVENT-IVE. Not prevent-TA-tive.

oh, pick me! I know this one!

Back in 1980 I took a class on the history of the English language. I freakin’ loved that class and the professor (grandson of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and son of Jean Renoir). During the last class of the semester, he expressed his opinion that within the next generation, people were going to start pronouncing that tt sound in the middle of words as dd instead. The example he gave was budder instead of butter. I thought it sounded … unlikely.

But he was on the money. When CNN hired Anderson Cooper (around 2001?), I heard him using that pronunciation right from the start, and I thought, damn, Professor Renoir was right! And since then, I’ve heard more and more people using it. All younger than me, of course.

So it’s a thing. You might be just starting to notice it.

Like nails on a chalkboard, right? Do they also say, "Lie-berry" instead of library? I'll bet they do. Topped by the worst of them, "Buh-skeddy" for spaghetti. Mercy. 

Please tell me you're kidding about Rachel. She has a Ph.D., for the love of Pete. 

I know. She is soooo smart and I was shocked. She said it several times in one show. Then a week or so later she pronounced it correctly. Some one must have told her. However, she did it again but just once during a later show but the next time she said it during that same show she said it correctly. She must have been saying suposablee for a long time but she has now corrected it and I haven't heard it again. 

That is a word that just screams to me when it is said improperly, so I always notice.

Moscow is pronounced Mos-co
Long o

There is no cow in Moscow.

I find regional pronunciations fascinating, so they don't bother me at all---whether the different is just down to an accent or if it's a completely different acceptable way of saying a word.

Now, myself, I tend to lump caramel in with pecan in that I consistently use 2 different pronunciations for each.

I tend to say the word "pecan" differently if I'm just asking if we need to buy any puh-kahns or if we want to try a piece of pee-can pie. And same with "caramel". Would you like some care-uh-mel sauce on your pie? Would you like some carmel corn instead?

This is obviously how people around me must say these things, so apparently we have a bit of caramel pecan confusion here in my neck of the woods.

I live in Virginia and I say car-a-mel.

When I was in 3rd grade and we were learning about syllables, I got into an argument with my teacher over the word "celery"

In my southern , country family it was 2 syllable "cel-rey.  She said no it is "cel e rey"   I thought she was a nut and my mom thought the teacher was wrong too. 

In the UK we pronounce all 3 syllables - SELL-uh-ree.

Darcy Collins , in the UK we also agree with librarylady about the pronunciation of Moscow to rhyme with Roscoe. I have no idea why. English is weird.

oh yvonne - you're right, it's definitely eSpresso. There is no X in espresso.