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Is it “Camel-uh” or “Cam-ahl-uh”?

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[-] memfree@lemmy.ml 131 points 2 months ago
[-] magnetosphere@fedia.io 29 points 2 months ago* (last edited 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@lemmy.ml 20 points 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@fedia.io 4 points 2 months ago

kah-MALL-uh

The right mispronounces it that way intentionally.

[-] magnetosphere@fedia.io 2 points 2 months ago

As I’ve heard. Now we know better than to perpetuate it!

[-] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 23 points 2 months ago

Commala? As in the pokemon Komala?

So it really is Komala Harris vs Trumpshoos

[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 months ago

Isn't the Pokemon's name pronounced like coma + koala? Coma and comma are different.

[-] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 1 points 2 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 points 2 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@fedia.io 16 points 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@jlai.lu 1 points 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@lemmy.ml 2 points 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@beehaw.org 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 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.

this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2024
105 points (84.8% liked)

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