Is it “Camel-uh” or “Cam-ahl-uh”?

    • magnetosphere
      29•4 months ago

      Thank you for this. I’ve heard her name mispronounced so often that I genuinely thought kah-MALL-uh was correct. Whoops! Comma-la it is!

    • Annoyed_🦀 A
      23•4 months ago

      Commala? As in the pokemon Komala?

      So it really is Komala Harris vs Trumpshoos

        • Annoyed_🦀 A
          1•4 months ago

          🤷I’ve been pronouncing it as Ko-Ma-La without the emphasise of ow. I appreciate this post though, i’ve seen so many asian name being butchered by english speaking country it become annoying.

          • @otp@sh.itjust.works
            2•4 months ago

            Ko-Ma-La without the emphasise of ow.

            I’m not sure I follow. Coma would probably be “ko-ma”, like I’d suggested, whereas comma is something like “cah-ma”…but I’m not sure where the “ow” comes in

    • MHLoppy
      16•4 months ago

      “Comma-la” unfortunately doesn’t help much for people without US accents lol (though of course people in the US are who the question and answer are most relevant to). On first reading – without the accent or something close to it – it implies “kom-uh-luh”, whereas with the accent it implies something more like “kah-muh-luh”, just based on how people pronounce “comma” differently.

    • @Miaou@jlai.lu
      1•4 months ago

      It’s funny because the way you spelt it sounds like the first “don’t” of the video you linked. Americans in general seem to make a point of pronouncing things their way rather than how they should be. I don’t think it’s racism as much as it is laziness.

      • memfree
        2•4 months ago

        their way rather than how they should be.

        Every language has different sounds. It has long been understood that languages will translate words/names into versions they can actually hear and pronounce. Sadly, some people mock or demean people who try to speak a non-native language and make errors in it. In the U.S. it used to be fairly common to mock Asians coming from a language with only one liquid consonant sound for their inability to differentiate between ‘r’ and ‘l’ sounds.

        I know I can’t hear the difference in various Russian language vowels and while I can hear tones, I don’t know how I’d explain their pronunciation in an Anglicized name – or if it would be relevant.

        While I appreciate that regional accents mean that non-U.S. citizens might not say “comma” the way it is heard in the U.S., I do expect that if a U.S. citizen tells me to pronounce their own name in a U.S. manner, then that is how it “should be” pronounced.

      • @Umbrias@beehaw.org
        1•4 months ago

        sorry are you saying people should pronounce their own names in ways they don’t prefer to be “correct”? Also etc etc language guides are descriptive not prescriptive.

        • @Isoprenoid@programming.devEnglish
          4•4 months ago

          Did you read the rest of my post? You can’t say “correctly pronounce it”, and then not give instruction. That doesn’t help anyone.

            • @Isoprenoid@programming.devEnglish
              3•4 months ago

              Your original post tells us to pronounce it the way she says it, but doesn’t actually show us how she says it.

              How did you expect us to pronounce it correctly if we haven’t heard her say it?

              • @PapaStevesy@lemmy.world
                0•4 months ago

                Your original post tells us to pronounce it the way she says it, but doesn’t actually show us how she says it.

                Because I’m not her. You figured it out and found a video on your own, you clearly didn’t need me. Why would I know better than her how to pronounce it?

                How did you expect us to pronounce it correctly if we haven’t heard her say it?

                I didn’t. I presumed that if someone cared enough, they would find an appropriate video; that presumption was proven correct. But I never expected anyone to do anything, certainly not to get so incredibly butt-hurt by mild sarcasm.

  • Random_Character_A
    20•4 months ago

    Fun fact.

    In Finnish “kamala” means “awful”.

    We are gonna have endless dad jokes with this one.

    • @davidagain@lemmy.world
      4•4 months ago

      In British English, Trump means (1) the sound an elephant makes or (2) a fart, particularly a noisy one. If you trump your own horn it means you’re boastful and think of yourself higher than other people do.

      President Trump = President Fart.
      Still funny after all these years, despite the looming fascism.

    • DrunemetonEnglish
      -5•4 months ago

      She does have the truly AWFUL job of being a women of color that our nation is depending on to beat one of the worst once elected, twice impeached former presidents.

  • @emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
    16•4 months ago

    The Indian (Sanskrit) name is pronounced ka-ma-laa (meaning lotus), with no stress, and no gap in between the syllables. The first two 'a’s are pronounced like the ‘u’ in rum, while the last is the same sound but longer (so like the ‘a’ in calm).

    The US Presidential candidate’s name is pronounced the way she likes, which in this case is closer to ko-ma-laa.

    • @funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
      -1•4 months ago

      Every word has stress. You probably mean the first phoneme is stressed. And the “rum” sound you’re looking for is called the “schwa”

      • @Paraneoptera@sopuli.xyz
        6•4 months ago

        Not in classical Sanskrit. Vedic Sanskrit had pitch accent, which had been lost by the classical Sanskrit era. English has stress accent. But many languages do not have stress accent, and either have pitch accent or syllables are not accented at all.

      • @emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
        3•4 months ago

        Every word has stress.

        In most Indian languages, most words are unstressed. There is a distinction between long and short syllables, but that comes from vowel length, not stress. A few words (like him-AA-la-ya) do have stress, but this is the exception and usually happens due to conjugation.

        You probably mean the first phoneme is stressed.

        No, kamala is unstressed.

        And the “rum” sound you’re looking for is called the “schwa”

        Yes.

    • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
      10•4 months ago

      It’s 'cause we took the letters from Latin, which actually had 5 vowels, and applied it to a Germanic language which, in my dialect, has 17.

      We also standardised the spelling in patches hundreds of years ago, and never updated it, but that’s a sort of separate issue.

      • The Octonaut
        6•4 months ago

        My friend, Americans do not care about how words are pronounced in the original language/location.

      • @Wilzax@lemmy.world
        4•4 months ago

        That’s not how she pronounces her name, so it’s not her name.

        The Vice president of the United States is named Kamala (/ˈkɑːmələ/) Harris (/ˈhærɪs/)

          • @Wilzax@lemmy.world
            8•4 months ago

            Her name isn’t कमला, it’s Kamala. It’s written in the latin alphabet on her American birth certificate. She pronounces her own name as ˈkɑːmələ. It doesn’t matter what the similar-sounding common name from a different country used by different people is. Her name is Kamala. ˈkɑːmələ.

              • @Wilzax@lemmy.world
                6•4 months ago

                First of all, If we anglicized her name, we would get 'kəmɑːlə, not ˈkɑːmələ, so that argument makes no sense. English has a tendancy to stress the second to last syllable of a name or word, and shift the vowel there accordingly. I will admit that you’re right in that the birth certificate thing isn’t the best example of what determines a name. Trans people, or anyone else who wishes to change their name from what their parents wrote at birth, are completely valid in their new name. But the point I was making is that she hasn’t embraced the Devanagari spelling of her name, the way she has the Latin spelling. She’s chosen a pronunciation of that spelling for herself, and been vocal about how she wants it said. Respect it, or shut up.

                Second, she’s not an immigrant. She was born in the US and is an American citizen by birth, which is (unfortunately) a requirement to run for president. Her name may originate from a similar sounding name from a different language, but that similar sounding name is not her name. The experiences of people who were happy with their name and were later forced to change it is a separate issue. To insist she change her name to fit your perception of what she should be called is exactly the thing you’re chastising me for doing. Which again, I’m not. I’m supporting her in the name she chooses to use.

                Third, “John” is another example that actually proves why your argument is wrong. It comes from the old hebrew יְהוֹחָנָן‎. But as other cultures adopted the name and changed it to be their own over hundreds of years, small changes turned it into Ιωάννης in Greek, Johannes in Latin, Jean in French, and eventually John in modern English. Why is the same thing happening to Kamala such an issue for you?

                Her name is what she says her name is, and the circumstances that led her to choose her name are MORE VALID than your opinion of what her name should be. End of discussion.

                https://youtu.be/GVGfzbP7WBY

          • @idiomaddict@lemmy.world
            5•4 months ago

            I’m an American who lives in Germany. The name my parents chose begins with [dʒ], but I haven’t introduced or thought of myself like that in years. My name therefore begins with [j].

            It’s really cool that you’re informed about the language that her name stems from, but that’s not the name she uses.