Here in Missouri, I say “Car-mul” and grocery store. But I too, have always wondered about these.
According to Webster online, where you can listen to the pronunciations, two versions of caramel are provided: Car-mul and Care-uh-mul. Oddly, there is no sound clip for Care-uh-mel, but it’s listed in the pronunciations.
Thanks for bringing this up. Now I can go on saying Car-mul without worrying about people thinking I sound like some backwoods hillbilly.
This. If you live in an area with more than one supermarket, especially if there are actual differences among them, people would never use the generic term. Of course on a sitcom, most of the audience wouldn’t know the names of the local markets.
[emphasis mine]
There are a bunch of different grocery chains where I live and sometimes I say “supermarket.” Thank you for pointing out that I’ve been doing it wrong. I suppose you only go to the BP or the Mobil and never just “the gas station.”
It was the only word my mother would allow us to use for that function/substance for most of my childhood. Around jr high she relented and we could say “poo”.
Nope, whether pronounced “CARE-uh-mel,” “CARE-uh-muhl,” or “CAR-muhl”, the spelling is “caramel.” Whether or not milk is included doesn’t change the pronunciation of the substance – that’s a dialectical thing. I say “CAR-muhl” for everything from caramelized sugar to caramel topping for your ice cream to the caramel inside a Snicker’s bar.
From Seinfeld, they called Body Odor “BO”. I’ve never called it BO, I’ve always called it body odor. After I saw that episode, I noticed some other tv shows that called it strictly by its abbreviation.
We say BO hereabouts.
Yeah, I’ve never seen this done in real life, but I think I am going to start doing it, no matter how small the amount.
“Nzinga, that pizza from the cafeteria looks yummy! How much was it?”
scribble scribble sliiiide
And here in New Jersey, we put “route” in front of the number. I’ve heard that this isn’t the case elsewhere in the nation, but here it’s Route 17, Route 80. Saying just “17” or “80” would be weird.
As for B.O.: apparently the abbreviation comes from a vintage deodorant ad. The subtle advertisement featured a foghorn blaring “BO! BO!”.
The one that gets me is the section of the store where you buy fruit and vegetables. We’d say just fruit’n’veg but US sitcoms at least all say prO-dOOse department. Even if we called it that we’d say Prod-Juice - letter u being pronounced you rather than ooo, as it is.
BO was in use long before that; same with BM.
I work at a Starbucks in northern California and hear Caramel pronounced both ways all day long. I hate making Caramel Frappiccinos
The comic strip Dick Tracy had a really scuffy, dirty character named B.O. Plenty as early as the 1930s. His name was definitely meant as a joke. I can remember the character from much later.
Did any of you Southerners ever drink a co-cola when you were a kid?
Isn’t that if it’s actually a route? You wouldn’t call 95 “Route 95”, would you?
I noticed on the Australian soap opera “Prisoner” (Called "Prisoner: Cell Block H), the more upscale characters tend to use different prounciations. I don’t know if this is on purpose or just the actor/actress.
Like Erica, the posh, upper class governor of Wentworth says:
Mee-Mo (not: meh-mo)
Vit (rhymes with pit)-a-min (not VITE-a-min)
Din(rhymes with pin)-ist-tee (not DINE-e-stee)
Vear (rhymes with care)-it-tee (not: Var-EYE-it-tee)
And lets not forget Whilst… That cracks me up everytime.
And so forth.
No, they call 95 the Turnpike.
Yup. In my circles it was probably used 50/50 with “Coke.” And, if you went out into the country, some people said, “Co-Coler.” 
:smack:
Only north of Exit 6!
My immediate thought on this is that the sitcoms you notice this on might be set in a city – like DC or NYC – where there are few actual grocery stores, but many corner/neighborhood markets.
FWIW, when I say “grocery store” I mean a big chain store like Safeway, Giant Eagle, A&P, Food Lion, Kroger, etc. with various departments. When I say “corner market” I mean a typically non-chain, small store with a limited – and sometimes specialized – selection. So you may go to one market for your produce and another for your meats, etc. Could be an East Coast distinction, but I have family in NYC and I am very clear on the difference between a grocery store and a market.