Pronounce Kamala

[HelenWheels]

apparently it is like Comma, as in a sentence and La

however we pronounce comma differently in UK
i guess it should be pronounced as they do in America rather than we would in UK?

Her nieces say it in an American accent. Most Indian names sound slightly different if said in an English or American accent

That is a description of vocalic r, which is a feature of North American accents and a number of other rhotic accents. If, like me, you have a non-rhotic English accent you don’t pronounce the r in those contexts. See here for an explanation. You may associate that spelling with the lengthened vowel but it is not an r sound. If spa and spar sound the same to you then what you are interpreting as an r sound is not an r sound but a vowel.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English

The vowel differences are even more significant than rhoticity here. (There are non-rhotic American accents, predominantly on the east coast, but many of them are fading.)

True. There are still some non-rhotic accents, or more accurately partially non-rhotic accents in New England, in the Southern US, and in African American English.

I apologize. I said "UK English" without thinking. All those "am" words have the same initial sound as Pamela. But not Kamala Harris. She pronounces it KAH-mah-lah. Or comma-lah, which is the easiest description, as it tells us Americans to emphasize the first syllable.

Of course the MAGA calls her Lala. (Cringing that my brother says it.). It's disrespectful, but not as much as Lord Velveetamorph! 😅

The point is that while it may be the same sound to you, it is a completely different sound to me, and to many other English speakers. So putting in an r instead of an ah is very confusing. You seem to not understand this?

With a rhotic accent every r is rolled like a pirate and in a non-rhotic accent you don't pronounce the letter r even when you think you do.

This is a matter of accents rather than age. In rhotic accents “farther” and “father” are pronounced in different ways because the “r” is sounded and there is no long “a” sound. “Cat” and “castle” have the same “a” sound in this accent.
we don’t say “rar-ther” etc - we just say “ra-ther”.

The “a” in pat and park is exactly the same sound in rhotic accents. There is no long “a”.

Are you sure?

I can’t think of any rhotic accents that don’t have a long a in father or at the end of a word like spa or bra.

And I can’t think of any rhotic accents where the par in parakeet is the same as the par in park.

Obviously you might be thinking of a rhotic accent that I’m not, but every one that I can think of has long a sounds.

EDIT- I’ve just thought some more and realised that there are some that use the same a in parakeet. But North American rhotic accents definitely differentiate between them.

It’s not just as easy as that though because the sound she is making is not one that we have in British English.

It’s the sound Americans use on the second syllable of “Natasha” and in the word “Amish”.

So unless you are going to do an American accent every time you say her name then you have to come up with an approximation in your own accent.

It’s very important to me to try to pronounce names correctly but there is a difficulty here in reproducing the sound. If some people don’t perceive the difficulty then I think they’re either not British or don’t have an ear for languages and accents.

She’s stressing the first syllable so I will do that and I will use the same sound for the “a” as I do in the second syllable of Natasha (and the same as I use in calm and farm and cat) Which will make it like Pamela with a K. Kar- mella in my accent would be nothing like what she is saying.(rhotic)

Yes I’m sure. Scottish accent

Saying calm ala isn’t putting in an American accent.

But if you’re saying that, you’re also not pronouncing it the way Kamala does!

Some Scottish accents - The a in Father - Bath - Rather - Bra etc is the same as the a in Apple, Accident, etc.

In most Scottish accents there is a long and short A though.

Some only have a long A and no short A.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_vowel_length_rule

That's why I very clearly started my sentence with SOME.

Apologies, I was more replying to another poster who said that rhotic accents don’t have long a. All Scottish accents have long a, some lack a short a.

No, if you look in that list of phonemes, there is only one “a” sound. - 17. Bat, farm, bath - it’s all the same sound.

Did you read the article? The star next to the a in the table means that it follows the Scottish Vowel Length rule. So that vowel sound is short in some contexts and long in others.

”Primarily, the rule is that certain vowels (described below) are phonetically long in the following environments:

• Before /r/.
• Before a voiced fricative (/v, z, ð, ʒ/).
• Before a morpheme boundary.
• In a word-final open syllable, save for the HAPPY vowel /e/ (or, in Geordie, /iː/).”

I don’t need to refer to Wikipedia - I am Scottish and I’m simply trying to explain to you how we speak!

spa, bra, park, parakeet, father, farm, bat … it’s all the same “a”.

The “a” in pat and park is exactly the same sound in rhotic accents. There is no long “a”.

Not in my rhotic accent. The "a" in pat is not the same sound as the "a" in park in my accent. I pronounce the "a" in pat and pack the same, but definitely different in park. In park, I lengthen the "a" sound, but not as much as the "a" in father.

Interesting, where are you from?

Interesting, where are you from?

I'm American. Deep South

Rather than confuse people with examples using r like park, my example words are usually cat and father. Kamala is the latter but I suppose a bit shorter.

Most english speakers don't stick random r sounds into words. There is not a single word in your list that I hear people sticking an r in