I can't figure out the difference in pronouncing "comedian" vs. "chameleon." I looked up their pronunciations in many dictionaries and audio sources, and practiced a lot, but my pronunciation still confuses Merriam-Webster Dictionary app's voice input function, which relies on Google's voice recognition technology. 80% of my attempts at "chameleon" are recognized as "comedian," while 100% of my "comedian" are registered correctly. Even for those "chameleon" cases, the Dictionary app was confused and listed "comedian" as candidate words.
I understand that the app is probably not the best tool to judge my pronunciation, but it is objective and reproducible. For comparison, my wife's pronunciation of "chameleon" are always correctly registered. And her "chameleon" pronunciations have never had "comedian" listed in candidate words, which means that the software thought that there was no confusion at all in her pronunciation. So this somehow proves that her pronunciation is much better than mine, at least according to Google's voice recognition software.
What is the trick for pronouncing "chameleon" correctly, so people (or Google) can understand what I mean when I say "I saw a chameleon the other day"?