"Caramel", which (clearly) has an "a" in the middle, has only this spelling world wide.
But in my experience, North Americans (Canadians too) don't pronounce the middle "a". They pronounce it exactly like the girl's name Carmel. From my experience, all Americans pronounce it without the "a" and all other places pronounce it with the middle "a" voiced.
Why is that?
Can this difference in pronunciation be traced to a root cause?
Best Answer
Do you say car-a-mel or car-mel? Is your “fire” closer to fah-yer or fayr?
{Arika Okrent _ Mentalfloss.com _ 3 reasons for syllabically ambiguous words}
Two or Three Syllables: caramel, mayonnaise, family, chocolate, camera, different, separate, favorite:
(mentalfloss.com)
Caramel appears have different pronunciations in different English dialects, the AmE one is just a variant which has been in place for a long time:
(blog.oxforddictionaries.com)
From (www.listenandlearnusa.com/blog)