What's up with the widespread mispronunciation of Kamala Harris's name?
The origin is simple enough. In English it's most common for the stress to be put on the second-to-last syllable of a word. This means a two-syllable word most often has the stress on its first syllable. A three-syllable word most often has it on the second syllable. So by default you'd pronounce Harris's first name as:
Kuh-MALL-uh
But this is far from a universal rule, and Kamala isn't an English name anyway. It has the stress on its first syllable:
KOM-muh-lah
It's a perfectly ordinary mistake for an English speaker to say this wrong. The real question is why so many conservatives who do know how it's pronounced are aggressively continuing to say it wrong. What's the point?
There isn't one, really, except to show that, by God, they aren't going to take orders from some liberal woman. Plus there's the usual Trumpism of refusing to ever admit a mistake, no matter how slight or obvious. And their deep habit—practically subconscious at this point—of disrespecting women and people of color. As a result, we have crowds of MAGA fans chanting kuh-MALL-uh as if they're showing her who's boss. It's kind of pathetic.
democrat party
Remember when W Bush passed the peace pipe with House Dems, and they called him out on referring to the "Democrat Party"? he said he'd do better.
A usage that began with Joe McCarthy.
Say what you like about the GOP, they're always true to their roots.
For all their whining about public education, they are very proud of their ignorance. Differentiating between nouns and adjectives is for Swiss cheese-eating sissies.
Came here to point out exactly that. These people are eight-year olds.
Right wing conservatives just like being inconsiderate ass holes. It’s in their nature.
^ ^ ^ THIS ^ ^ ^
Yep. Was going to post the same.
Time to repupose the phrase "Ugly American."
Maybe it's for the same reason so many Republicans call the Democratic Party the Democrat Party: a combination of ignorance plus malevolence.
Hint: in this case, it ain't ignorance.
Because that's what the party of failure and corruption do, they fail and corrupt.
But I've been pronouncing it 'KAM-a-la', to rhyme with 'ker-BAM-a-la'.
Is this wrong?
You're closer than Kevin. It's definitely not KOM-uh-la. It's "KAH-mə-lə". Check Wikipedia, which even has a sound file.
She has requested that people call her “comma-la.”
Which is pretty much the same thing. I don't think I'd write the pronunciation of "comma" as "KOM-mə (KAH-mə is pretty much how I, a native Californian, pronounce it. (Note that the shwa -- "ə" -- is how most unstressed vowels com out when spoken by English speakers -- though, it's had to look at it and not think of it as an "e" that somehow got turned upside down as assume it sounds like "ehhh".)
Although all of this is very interesting and the correct pronunciation is as Kamala herself would have it, which I believe is KAM-a-la, just wanted to point out that the name as originally pronounced at the source (Sanskrit/other Indian languages) is Kam-a-LA.
As this slate writer puts it no matter what all these pronunciations are wrong in some sense.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/kamala-harris-name-how-to-pronounce-pronunciation-indian.html
—r
so, like politifact, did this lamestream journo at slate rate both the republican mispronunciation of the vp's name & the vp's mispronunciation of her own name as a pants on fire lie?
The issue around pronouncing words from foreign languages is that every language uses a limited set of phonemes and every language uses a different set (closely related languages, like French and English, have closely related phoneme sets, but still not identical).
This creates difficulty in pronouncing, or even spelling, foreign words because it requires the use of phonemes that the would-be speaker doesn't know. I expect that Kamala is one of those words; its correct pronunciation requires sounds that most English speakers don't know how to make.
I loved when I read recently that Kamala's stepkids like to refer to her as "Momala." I thought it was very sweet and as a bonus it rhymes with her actual name.
O.
Whose name would Jesus knowingly mispronounce?
pontius pilate, the chief yoga instructor of judaea.
lol
I got an email from Jesus. He told me my car needed brake pads. He said he would give me 20% off. So I told my wife that it really is true. Jesus saves.
Guess you didn’t get the memo. JC has been demoted. Too soft on immigration, not to mention his predilection to hand out free health care to the disadvantaged. Todays evangelicals achieve eternal life in heaven by praying to TFG.
It's their version of being the annoying little brother who keeps egging you on with his annoying stuff because he knows it drives you crazy. Not that I'm thinking of anyone in particular. 😉
Check Amazon or Etzy -- they are loaded with shirts and hats that say:
,-la.
get it? COMma-la. My baseball hat is already on its way. The logo looks better (and bigger) than it does with this font.
georgia senate incumbent david perdue was the og of this, pulling it out while campaigning against TERRIBLE CANDIDATE jon ossoff in october 2020.
bonus points that dp was on the senate foreign relations committee with kamala & knew good & well how to say her name.
ABacus. BALtimore. CARavan. DELicate. ENterprise. FALLacy. GENerous. HALibut. INtegral. JANitor. . . . Shall I go on?
Nicely done.
I hate it when they have the emphasis on the wrong syl-LA-ble
????????
How many of those words have French origins? I blame 1066 and the French for the inconsistencies of the English language.
I haven't been able to think of good old England-born three syllable English words that have the emphasis on the second syllable. I think Kevin was off the mark on that. Maybe he was thinking of Spanish.
Obama?
Anytime Republicans can be jerks, they will be. Aggressively.
Another example is using "Jew" as an adjective instead of "Jewish".
We used to argue that one could be anti Zionist without being antisemitic. Now the Republicans are pro Zionist and antisemitic.
"And their deep habit—practically subconscious at this point—of disrespecting women and people of color."
I'm sorry, its not a "deep habit", and certainly not "practically subconscious". It is a calculated attempt to dehumanize, degrade, and to cast her as someone who is different from all of us true blooded Americans. A person to be hated and feared. They did the same shit with Obama, purposely using his middle name Hussein, with emphasize on the obviously Muslim middle name.
Just standard scum bag racist shit, the MAGA GOP trademark.
Thank you. Enough whitewashing (heh) this. It's deliberate, overt racism. FFS do you think these people don't have advisors who know better?!? They know better. This is a CHOICE.
And the Republican rank-and-file eat it up. "A Black woman running for President! Why, that just isn't done!!"
Yes. They did the same to Justice Sotomayor.
bonus for them that sotta-mier sounds like sodomizer.
... john sidney mc cain
NOT barack hussein ...
as chanted by a cincinnati rightwing shockjock at an ohio campaign rally. i wonder if a 24 year old james "david" vance [sic] sclepped down there to attend.
& will he be inspired to have his wife usha chilukuri vance announce at their rallies, "donald john trump, NOT kamala devi emhoff".
Don't you mean James "Donald" Vance?
you're halfway there, jon bongiovi.
RepubLICKins bein’ RepubLICKins
This is definitely a Republican thing and it's totally on purpose. As just one example, Matt Walsh deliberately mispronounces the names of both Biden press secretaries: he pronounces the "P" in Psaki, and the current secretary is "Karen Jeen Pear." Just bog-standard misogyny.
to be fair, matt walsh is only slightly more intelligent than jim hoeft, the gateway pundit, so he just may be that stupid to not know how to say psaki & pierre.
Good point, that's always a possibility. Some years ago, when TFG was campaigning in Nevada, he spent a few moments riffing on how the locals pronounce "Nevada" one way, but outsiders say it a different way. But he got it backwards. He wasn't trying to piss them off, he was just too ignorant or lazy to learn which was right, and too arrogant to care.
It's a misogynist thing, and too many conservatives are misogynists these days. The behavior includes comments on her laugh, her appearance, questions about her reproductive choices and her accomplishments. And an outright refusal to seriously consider her many accomplishments and achievements and political acumen. (48 hours to unify the Democratic Party is freakin' huge.)
Having been on the receiving end of this type of behavior throughout my life; always at the hands of men who I made feel insecure, its an old trick and recognizable as the great put down to keep her in her place an lift the put-downer up.It's an act of desperation to maintain a world slipping between his fingers and out of manly control.
Thankfully, most men seem to have outgrown such childish notions, because it's so annoying.
I pronounce the "P" in Psaki.
I pronounce Sean such that it rhymes with bean.
As much as possible, I pronounce words as they are spelled. I am well aware that English has an unfortunate combination of sounding-out rules that are a mix of Germanic, Celtic, Latin, and Greek - which is unnecessary if the language is rationalized, as it has been to a degree, and our immense benefit, over the centuries. Psaki and Sean are Greek and Celtic.
Sean has many Anglicized spelling variations, including Shaun and Shawn, and that's how it should be.
But you're an asshole. So clearly that's what assholes do.
do you also say the p in psychology? pneumatic? psoriasis?
I'm sure "Dana Decker" also pronounces "Decker" as "Dek-ker" or "Dess-ker," because in their devotion to pronouncing things according to the One True Method of Spelling, he/she plainly recognizes that there is no orthographical point in having both a c and a k next to each other unless the letters are intended to have distinct sounds.
I remember when Republicans all insisted on saying Barack Hussein Obama. This isn't new.
What's up with the widespread mispronunciation of Kamala Harris's name?
It's being done on purpose and its being done for a specific reason. To "other" her.
I make this observation: You cannot understand the modern GOP without understanding professional wrestling.
Trump owned the Atlantic City Convention Hall where a lot of WWE events were held in the past. He had Linda McMahon in his cabinet, he's good friends with Vince McMahon Jr.
Hulk Hogan tearing his shirt at the recent GOP Convention was the perfect example of how pro wrestling aligns with the modern GOP. It was no accident. Many former WWE wrestlers got to know and like Trump and participated in wrestling events.
It's scripted bullshit. That's what Trump is in a nutshell. It's a perfect match.
Anyone who knows about professional wrestling knows about Kamala the Ugandan Giant.
A real person, born James Arthur Harris in Senatobia, Mississippi. A former truck driver, because of his size and athletic ability, he became a pro wrestler and when he adopted the character of Kamala the Ugandan Giant, basically portraying a cannibal from the wilds of Africa complete with mask and spear he became world famous, wrestling people like Hogan and Andre the Giant.
I will be good money nearly all Trump fans are wrestling fans and nearly all of them are old enough to know about Kamala the Ugandan Giant. That's why they call her that. Call its psychosis if you will but that's why. It makes her seem foreign and little threatening. Any wrestling fan will tell you that Kamala was one of the scariest wrestlers to see up close and in person.
But James Arthur Harris was a good family man and when his body couldn't take being a wrestler anymore, he went back to driving a truck.
Like a lot of wrestlers, Harris was unprotected. No union, no pension, no health insurance. when it was over, it was over. Many have to take regular jobs or spend their weekends signing autographs and selling memorabilia. When the cheering stops, it can be pretty brutal. Unless you have a second act the way Jesse "The Body" Ventura did as governor of Minnesota, life seems pretty empty. A lot of wrestler commit suicide, either through addiction or something else. It's a tough life.
Luckily Harris avoided that but he could avoid losing his legs to diabetes. Devoted fans had to step up to help pay to handicap accessibilize his home because he certainly wasn't going to get help from his former employers who use up their stars like so many lame race horses and then leave them out to pasture. He died in 2020 at age 70 due to COVID-19. Many pro wrestlers don't even live to be that age.
If I was Kamala Harris I would go and visit his family in Mississippi and then I would say the following:
"For those out there who deliberately mispronounce my name, I got the chance to meet the wonderful family of Kamala the Ugandan Giant, whose real name is James Arthur Harris from Senatobia, Mississippi. A hard working family man, he won fame an fortune as Kamala and so often happens to pro wrestlers, when the cheering stops, they're left to fend for themselves. Luckily, wrestlers and wrestling fans stepped up to help James Arthur Harris in his later years and stepped up to help his family keep their home, pay his medical bills and pay for his funeral expenses. I say this for this reason. There are a lot of people James Arthur Harris', good, hard-working family men and women out there who never received fame and fortune being in the ring, but often times are left to fend for themselves in this crazy world of ours and they shouldn't have to. And that's why we believe in things like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and Obamacare, that's why we've made them laws and that's why we protect them from the Republicans who want to get rid of them, get rid of all the things that bring security and stability in our lives and lives of millions when you get old, or you're down on your luck or you're struck with illness. If we didn't, then we don't deserve to be a political party. We shouldn't exist. And as awful as that history has been at times it has also been wonderful because the party has been bound together by the idea from time it had been founded by William Mooney and Society of St. Tammy and his soldiers on the line during the Revolutionary War and by Thomas Jefferson who wrote "All men are created equal", that we all have value and that don't judge you by who your father is. And this party has survived because we've expanded on those ideas to include all the people. And many have left because they've rejected this. So that's where we are, and that's what we believe in for all the James Arthur Harris' out there and many more who deserve their opportunity at the American Dream. Not fame and fortune, but a life made whole and comfortable by family, friends and the dignity that we are all endowed by our Creator."
You are precisely right.
Interesting idea! I'm not sure how it would land with the vast majority of Americans who know nothing about pro wrestling. But maybe not a bad idea, especially if the Repubs pick up on the idea of mocking Kamala by invoking the Ugandan Giant guy.
How was his stage name pronounced?
Kuh-MALL-uh.
No matter what wrestling territory he was in during his career (and he was in many, not just the WWE), he would always feature a manager sometimes named "Friday" or "Kimschi" or "Stanley" such dressed like an explorer in khaki with a pith helmet. The idea being the manager/explorer had found him in the jungles of Uganda and brought him to the U.S. He was always in a mask, so you never knew who it was (usually some local jobber) but that was the point, to emphasize the mysterious about Kamala, and it worked, because back then in the 80s and early 90s pre-internet, the fans wanted it to be true. And like with Trump, no mater how much BS he peddles or how ridiculous his plans are, they believe because they want it to be true or want it to be.
Mr. Drum has officially been “owned”. Again.
On another topic… I see the Jew / Muslim war is heating up. Nuke Lebanon!
“For the death of small children, Nasrallah should pay with his head.” Mr. Smotrich wrote on social media after the attack on Saturday, referring to Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hezbollah. “Lebanon as a whole has to pay the price.”
Have at it.
...and here we have the bigoted version of events as exhibit one to prove why they do this.
I miss Trump's WWE days.
Especially this one:
https://youtu.be/WEy0W85mSaM?si=nUJBtutts3XbPq6u
i remember seeing a picture of donold in the oval with vince & linda mc mahon & their kids & inlaws, & some wwe fan remarked, "everyone in this photo has been on the receiving end of a stonecold stunner".
I'd like to give him the Von Raschke claw and scream "You think this is fake don't you?!"
Ignorance is a virtue, is the idea I think
As long as they learn how to pronounce “Madam President”, I’ll let it go.
Do you emphasize the first or second syllable in "madam"?
holy jesus on a fucking cracker
is Kevin really, seriously asking why R's mispronounce her name?
this must be satire, right? or something.
what is happening.....
It's also implicitly saying she's too stupid or too foreign to know how to pronounce her own name right. That gives them satisfaction too.
So like the Gadarene swine, they'll just go with the rest of the herd.
KD: It's a perfectly ordinary mistake for an English speaker to say this wrong.
It is not a mistake - unless you want English to incorporate ALL how-to-say-it rules throughout the world and throughout history. I don't, because at that point the language is no longer phonetic (or syllabic), but pictographic, where the letters are merely an assemblage of lines and curves and how one says words is from a pictograph-sounds table lookup, not an inspection-of-the-letters that mostly works.
If we are ever to have a language with consistent pronunciation and syllable-stress rules - which we should strive for, even if we're not there* - it is not a mistake to say Kuh-MALL-uh.
* Several times over the centuries there were Spelling Reform movements which significantly rationalized the language DESPITE FIERCE RESISTANCE TO ACCOMPLISHING THAT GOAL. We should be grateful for those reformers, who made English more consistent. Let's not quit now.
It's a mistake to repeat it.
And what would the spelling difference be, exactly?
it is not a mistake to say Kuh-MALL-uh.
It’s a mistake to not call somebody by their actual name, no matter how “grammatically wrong” you think it’s pronounced. Only assholes insist on wrong naming people once they’ve been told how to pronounce their name.
It's very simple. A person's name should be pronounced the way the person says it is pronounced.
If anyone intentionally doesn't do that because reasons, they are just being assholes.
There is an old joke about a man of Polish descent who made a large fortune and had a number of daughters; no sons. The result is that none of his grandchildren bore his surname (remember it's an old joke, from a time when children got their father's surnames). In his old age, when a number of his grandsons were adults, the old man made a will leaving a large portion of his fortune to whichever grandson would legally change his surname to the grandfather's surname. However the will, as you might expect from a written document, specified only the spelling of the name but not the pronunciation of it, leading one of the grandsons to change his surname to Zaustinski, pronounced "Jones".
The correct pronunciation of a person's name is whatever they say it is, regardless of whether it makes phonetic sense.
If it helps, the correct way to pronounce JD Vance is James Donald Bowman.
it's what's on his birth certificate.
he can't just be some flighty bird & willynilly change his name & expect us to go along with his craziness.
james donald bowman is who he is in the eyes of god, & that's who he is in my eyes then.
we must deadname j.d. vance to keep him alive.
Bush had his nucular problems and Quayle couldn't spell potato.
And no matter what anyone says, "JD" stands for "Just Dumpme".
Easiest way to remember. And I hope Randy Rainbow does a quick update and rerelease:
https://youtu.be/0RbKStEFNT8?si=e0BRgH4MRuXZdPYZ
don-OLD
It's like she was designed in a lab to drive Trump nuts. From California, mixed race, child of immigrants, highly educated, female, prosecutor... I think we can expect endless attempts to humiliate her from him. He's going to try everything in the book.
attended high school in montreal during the premiership of pierre trudeau, whose wife repeatedly rejected donald trump's flirtations at studio 54.
I love hearing them mispronounce her name. All those people out there who aren't sure how they will vote, what do they hear? They hear all the small slights they've received over the years, that aren't so small when you add them up. Maybe some of them will vote for Kamala just to say "F you" to all the jerks out there.
Kevin's theory could explain part of it, but I think the main reason is more obvious:
Their pronunciation sounds more foreign or more (gasp) Muslim.
It's Barack Hussein Obama all over again.
Eye-rack
Remember when Bush purposely pronounced Saddam's name incorrectly?
He knew what he was doing. He wanted to annoy Hussein.
Republicans know exactly what they are doing. They want to annoy Kamala Harris. But some of the people I know who do it, just think it is funny to make fun of her name.