Is it “Camel-uh” or “Cam-ahl-uh”?

    • magnetosphere@fedia.io
      27·
      3 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!

      • otp@sh.itjust.works
        11·
        3 months ago

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

        • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
          1·
          3 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
            1·
            3 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
      14·
      3 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.

    • Drunemeton@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1014·
      3 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.

  • LalSalaamComrade@lemmy.mlEnglish
    123·
    3 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@lemmy.sdf.org
      6·
      3 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@mander.xyz
        71·
        3 months ago

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

      • Wilzax@lemmy.world
        42·
        3 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/)

        • LalSalaamComrade@lemmy.mlEnglish
          33·
          3 months ago

          To somehow suggest that the sound of अ (ə) becomes आ (ɑː) is ridiculous. It’s not कामला (jaundice, billrubin), it’s कमला (lotus, Goddess Lakshmi). Use an IPA reader to check the sound you’ve provided, versus mine.

          • Wilzax@lemmy.world
            82·
            3 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.

            • LalSalaamComrade@lemmy.mlEnglish
              22·
              3 months ago

              It’s written in the latin alphabet on her American birth certificate

              So is mine and every citizen born in India, a non-English country. Your point being that people get to decide how to butcher other’s name because it was *checks character* written in Latin?

              She pronounces her own name as ˈkɑːmələ.

              PoC immigrants are forced to anglicize their names. Koreans and Chinese folks are forced to have a alternative English name. Indians are forced to deal with butchered pronounciations, or pick a shorter nickname. But hey, thanks for being a part of the problem.

              It doesn’t matter what the similar-sounding common name from a different country used by different people is.

              It does, and this behaviour speaks volume about how much you respect other people and their culture. John isn’t pronounced as Yohn in non-English speaking areas, right?

              • Wilzax@lemmy.world
                61·
                3 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

                • LalSalaamComrade@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  12·
                  3 months ago

                  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.

                  Whataboutism to twist and call me transphobic? Why do you mention trans people here? ‘Pronouns’ and ‘pronounce’ have nothing in common.

                  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?

                  Because that change was organic, and took hundreds of years? Are you going to conveniently ignore that?

                  Her name is what she says her name is

                  …while ignoring all the nuances, that is, her conditioning by a society that has taught her to internalize hatred towards her own identity? Attitude like that of your is the reason why second and third generation immigrants suffer from the pain of having a cultural disconnect, making them feel like an alien - being discriminated in their own country, and being a foreigner to their own culture. And now, you’re trying to gaslight a native speaker?

                  It does not take a genius to look at the butchered transliteration(s) - (funny how there’s no agreement on a singular pronounciation?) versus the original pronunciation on Wiktionary.

          • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
            51·
            3 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.