Tomato-Tomahto

I've created a monster. My husband, who likes caramel, took exception to yesterday's blog. During his defense of this over-used flavour, we wound up in a face off over the correct pronunciation of caramel. He, despite his PhD, pronounced it "CAR-mel".

Well, as a former ESL teacher, I just had to say something. Factor in a string of editors' rejections, a storm front moving in and plummeting caffeine levels, and I got downright snippy. "Sorry, but Carmel's a mountain range in Israel, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It has nothing to do with sweets. The candy is CARE-a-mel. Three syllables, not two. Just think of Caramilk bars. It's CARE-a-milk, no CARmilk."

Good thing he had to leave for work. Otherwise we would likely have moved onto the correct pronunciation of "basil". It's always been pronounced with a soft "a" and now everyone and their third cousin is pretentiously making it rhyme with "nasal". No no no! It's bah-zil -- as in John Cleese's verbally abusive hotel owner in Fawlty Towers.

Oh, bother. I've just dragged the Brits into it. Now I'm going to hear about how we Colonials have butchered perfectly good words like privacy, vitamin, schedule and route. In our defense we Canucks still say leff-tenant (lieutenant).

All this over some silly burnt sugar. If only the food industry had fallen in love with butterscotch instead...