Is it “Camel-uh” or “Cam-ahl-uh”?
- lolola ( @lolola@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 83•2 months ago
Obama, Obamala, 'bamala, Kamala
- Call me Lenny/Leni ( @shinigamiookamiryuu@lemm.ee ) English32•2 months ago
Thanks Obamala.
- Hegar ( @Hegar@fedia.io ) 29•2 months ago
That’s one of the cleverest pronunciation guides I’ve ever seen.
- Che Banana ( @The_Che_Banana@beehaw.org ) 4•2 months ago
…Fee-fi fo-mala, Kah-malllah! 🎵
- memfree ( @memfree@lemmy.ml ) 79•2 months ago
Comma-la (as she tells us to pronounce it), or even Com’la (as it is traditionally pronounced)
- magnetosphere ( @magnetosphere@fedia.io ) 18•2 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!
- memfree ( @memfree@lemmy.ml ) 15•2 months ago
Happy to help!
Oh, I shoulda linked to a first-hand source where she herself wrote “comma-la” as the pronunciation (no particular accent on syllables). It is in her book, and also towards the bottom of this piece has that excerpts from her book: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/book-excerpt-kamala-harris-truths-hold/story?id=60234101
- SaltySalamander ( @SaltySalamander@fedia.io ) 4•2 months ago
kah-MALL-uh
The right mispronounces it that way intentionally.
- magnetosphere ( @magnetosphere@fedia.io ) 1•2 months ago
As I’ve heard. Now we know better than to perpetuate it!
- Annoyed_🦀 🏅 ( @Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc ) 11•2 months ago
Commala? As in the pokemon Komala?
So it really is Komala Harris vs Trumpshoos
- MHLoppy ( @MHLoppy@fedia.io ) 10•2 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 ( @Miaou@jlai.lu ) 1•2 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 ( @memfree@lemmy.ml ) 2•2 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 ( @Umbrias@beehaw.org ) 1•2 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.
- Nemoder ( @Nemoder@lemmy.ml ) 42•2 months ago
I think it’s pronounced “Madam President”
- 404 ( @404@lemmy.zip ) 5•2 months ago
So say we all.
- solarvector ( @solarvector@lemmy.ml ) 4•2 months ago
Was wondering earlier, why not just President? Why add the “madam”?
- Nemoder ( @Nemoder@lemmy.ml ) 1•2 months ago
It’s just a slightly more formal sounding title. This answer on stackexchange goes through some of the history on why alternatives aren’t used.
- DavidDoesLemmy ( @DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone ) 10•2 months ago
Karma-la… But drop the ‘r’
- LalSalaamComrade ( @velox_vulnus@lemmy.ml ) English9•2 months ago
/kəmələ/ is how it is said. Those weird gyphs are IPA symbols, not sure if they’re part of any European languages that uses Latin as their alphabet.
The issue with English is that it is a non-phonetic language. In English, ‘a’ can sound either like æ, eɪ, ɑː, ɔː, etc (refer IPA). The specific ‘a’ sound in Kamala has a name, by the way - it is called schwa (ə).
I’m pretty sure a French or a German wouldn’t butcher this name, as their alphabets are pretty consistent in phonetic pronunciation - they just map fine with Indian languages, like take for example, Hindi - ‘a’ -> अ, ‘i’ -> इ, ‘e’ -> ए, ‘o’ -> ओ, etc.
In Devanagari, it is written as कमला (ka + ma + laa), which is the feminine form of कमल (ka + ma + la). In Hindi, every varnmala by default has a short ‘a’ - adding a ा turns this into a longer ‘aa’ sound (क् + अ -> क (ka), क् + आ -> का (kaa)).
Yes, I know that Kamala is probably half-Dravidian (Tamil, or Telugu, I think), but it really doesn’t matter a lot - sure, there’s some differences between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages, one of which being the schwa deletion, but apart from that, most letters are almost similar in function.
- CanadaPlus ( @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org ) 9•2 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.
- RandomVideos ( @RandomVideos@programming.dev ) 4•2 months ago
I pronounce it like the toki pona word “kalama”
No, i do not swap “la” and “ma”
- LalSalaamComrade ( @velox_vulnus@lemmy.ml ) English2•2 months ago
Actually, this is the right pronounciation, but obviously, with the words swapped.
- Track_Shovel ( @Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net ) English4•2 months ago
Anyone else craving olives after reading this thread?
- hddsx ( @hddsx@lemmy.ca ) 3•2 months ago
Anyone have the IPA pronunciation?
- LalSalaamComrade ( @velox_vulnus@lemmy.ml ) English5•2 months ago
/kəmələ/ is the sound. Since she’s half-Dravidian, we don’t do schwa deletion over here.
Edit: /kəmələ/, not /kə.mə.lə/
- The Octonaut ( @TheOctonaut@mander.xyz ) 6•2 months ago
My friend, Americans do not care about how words are pronounced in the original language/location.
- tyler ( @tyler@programming.dev ) 4•2 months ago
Some of us do.
- nomad ( @Nomad@infosec.pub ) 3•2 months ago
Watch miss marvel and listen how her mother calls her.
- Dave ( @Dave@lemmy.nz ) 3•2 months ago
Neither! I also had this question. No emphasis on any part, karma-la.
- MerchantsOfMisery ( @MerchantsOfMisery@lemmy.ml ) 2•2 months ago
“Kahm-lah”.
- intensely_human ( @intensely_human@lemm.ee ) 2•2 months ago
Emphasis is on the first syllable, is how I’ve heard it.
- Todd Bonzalez ( @todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee ) 2•2 months ago
ML making fun of a Black woman’s name. I wish I was surprised, but I’m not.
- rickyrigatoni ( @rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee ) 14•2 months ago
What are you talking about? Nobody here is making fun of her name.
- Call me Lenny/Leni ( @shinigamiookamiryuu@lemm.ee ) English1•2 months ago
Kah-muh-luh as it would be pronounced in her mind. Or Camille, if it was anglicized.
- sarchar ( @sarchar@programming.dev ) English1•2 months ago
Ga-ma-la