_caramel_

[Wilson Gray]

Could there one have been both a

[kAr at mEl]

and a

[kar at m@l]

that eventually became

[karm at l]

?

I can't remember when I switched to the trisyllabic pronunciation, but
it probably wasn't until after I got out of the Army at the age of 25
and moved from Saint Louis to Los Angeles for good. My wife thinks
that it was a grad student at at around the same age that she made the
switch. IAC, we both somehow got the impression that bisyllabic was
wrong and trisyllabic right, after growing up bisyllabic in regions a
thousand miles apart.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain


On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 9:12 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: _caramel_
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> My unreliable memory tells me I grew up out of
> "carmel" (as in the candy, probably picked up on
> the street*) into "caramel", each pronounced as below.
> White, slightly earlier period, New York City.
>
> * No, not the candy, the pronunciation.
>
> Joel
>
> At 12/19/2011 01:21 AM, John Fitzpatrick wrote:
>>Carmel--first vowel has COT sound
>>Caramel--I say three syllables, the first "A" as in BAT.
>>Demographics: Â White; grew up in the '50s & '60s in Wash., D.C. and adjacent
>>Montgomery Co., Md.; parochial schools
>>
>>Seán Fitzpatrick
>>“The heart that you break--
>>that’s the one that you rely on.”
>>
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>
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