Is everyone making fun of you for saying 'car-ml' instead of 'cara-mel' or 'pee-KAN' instead of 'PEE-kahn'? I say 'buh-kahn' or some reason, maybe to enjoy the hails of derision because apparently no one else says it that way. A Harvard professor, who probably needed to do some sort of sciencific study to justify his outrageous salary, did a study of how people pronounce certain words like pecan or caramel. You can see the results of the study plotted on maps here. Now you can see if the way you say the word is the right way, i.e., the way everyone else says it. Cool stuff.