Dust to dust

Today being Remembrance Day, let us look at the word "khaki", so associated with military uniforms. It comes from an Urdu word meaning "dust". The colour, probably achieved by washing the fabric in muddy water, was adopted for use in uniforms by the British army in India and Afghanistan in the 1840s, the first use of camouflage. If you think of the pictures we see on TV of Afghanistan, you can see why "dust colour" makes for good camouflage. Up till then, the British wore highly conspicuous red uniforms, but with improvements in the accuracy of firearms, the wisdom of camouflage became obvious.
A peculiarly Canadian pronunciation of this word exists (and I use the word "peculiar" not in its pejorative sense): CARkee. About fifty years ago it was probably the most common Canadian pronunciation. I recently conducted a facebook poll to see how it is faring, and the results from Canadian respondents were:
CACKee: 45
CAHkee:: 19
CARkee: 15

Not wanting to be indiscreet,  I did not ask how old the "CARkee" respondents are, but judging from their facebook profile pictures, they are not in the first flush of youth. So this Canadian pronunciation is certainly not dead yet, but on its way out. It is interesting, however, to see that CAHkee (the standard British pronunciation) has a stronger showing here than in the US, where my CACKee respondents outnumbered the CAHkee ones 11 to 1.
For another Remembrance Day-themed post, see In Flanders Fields the poppies... and Soldiering on.
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