Kamala Harris’s name is pronounced Kamalathat is, in Spanish it would rhyme in assonance with words like camera, lamp, sheet or Malaga. It is likely that we had not heard much about this name of Indian origin until a few months ago, when doubts about Biden’s continuity made that, suddenly, that vice president who had previously been discarded by her own party became the best candidate for the White House. Since then, the media has been repeating to us the name Kamala pronounced correctly, with an esdrújulo, and, although in Spanish it is written without an accent because it is a foreign name, its genuine accent scheme seems to have already become widespread.
Americans, for their part, have naturalized this proparoxytone… all except Donald Trump. Because when Trump wants to mention Kamala Harris in public using her given name, and not any of those hurtful circumlocutions that he sometimes uses, he pronounces his rival’s name as “Kúmala” (a proparoxytone with the vowel changed) or as “Kamála”, a plain word that he sometimes distorts into “Ké-mala”, perhaps so that the Hispanic voter does not miss the pun that turns it into how bad. The cheapness of the mockery is pitiful but he does not stop doing it: Trump has been trying for months with a maniac’s puntilism to never say KamalaAnd that, like almost everything in the language used in the public arena, is not a mistake or an oversight. It is not innocent. By deliberately mispronouncing her name, Trump intends to make Kamala Harris seem strange, different, a stranger to the territory he intends to govern: an intruder who aspires to a position for which she does not even deserve to fight. In this week’s presidential debate, he took the route of not saying her name at any point.
Since all populist leaders are similar, it is easy to find a Hispanic echo in this linguistic harassment tactic practiced by Trump. Nicolás Maduro, with his tedious verbosity, insists on calling Trump “Mr. Trump,” as if this effort in Spanish pronunciation made even more evident the outdated anti-American rhetoric that the Venezuelan displays.
Kamala is a rare female name in the United States, it does not have the extension of Jessica, Mary or Sally, but it is not at all strange in terms of accent: the name Pamela, for example, which we pronounce in Spanish as llano, in English also sounds like Pamelaa proparoxytone, like Kamala’s. On the other hand, given names are no longer limited to the more or less customary catalogue of anthroponyms of a language and a place. In the United States, as in Spain, given names are increasingly original; Trump has an example at home: one of his granddaughters is called Arabella, a name that was rare in the United States until a decade ago. Clear instructions on how to pronounce these uncommon names are enough to avoid making any more mistakes. Trump surely found this instruction in his cabinet the moment after he mispronounced it, but he did not want to follow it.
In addition, for a certain American sector of a similar age to Trump, the name Kamala pronounced as a flat, Kamála, evokes a character who had a certain career in the world of television entertainment at the end of the century. James Arthur Harris was an American professional wrestler, black, of southern origin and, let’s say, not very technically gifted, who had as his stage name King KamalaHe was presented in the ring barefoot, dressed in a loincloth and with a pitiful tribal painting on his head to sell him commercially as a kind of African cannibal angry at the loss of his throne. Those who enjoyed such racist embarrassment laughed at him with simplicity and some of those spectators are today voters called to vote in the next American presidential elections. Who knows if Trump, a cunning calculator of linguistic evocations, does not have this B-series character in mind to instill subliminal connections in his electorate.
This is merely an anecdote that portrays a leader like Trump, but that says nothing about her, about Kamala Harris, a rival whose linguistic history has given her more benefit than it has taken away. Because Kamala Harris has made a virtue of her own biography as a speaker. Daughter of a Jamaican and an Indian, both emigrants, Kamala said she remembers how her mother was treated as if she were stupid for speaking English with a southern Indian accent. She thus recreated a generational trait that is constant in the history of the United States itself: the fact that in migrant families, children speak the official language more fluently than their parents. Being a child of a migrant is being, in many cases, a translator, a cultural mediator and an interpreter in everyday situations. And that forces us, of course, to reflect on standards and uniformity from time to time.
Dealing with a different language of origin, a name or a surname that is uncommon or difficult to spell is not a big deal at first, but it does teach us about differences on a daily basis. Donald Trump’s German grandfather, called Friedrich Drumpf, must have often had to spell his surname and explain with his German accent and poor English how to pronounce his name. But of course, he didn’t have his grandson in front of him to make jokes at his expense.
#Kamalas #accent