I Knew It!

By the way, everybody here finds it extremely easy to pronounce Klara’s name. Including my 6-year-old niece Klubnikis who is an English-speaker. 

As I suspected, the problem resided entirely in the typical Midwestern tendency to engage in churlish resistance to anything even slightly unfamiliar. 

13 thoughts on “I Knew It!

  1. I’m very puzzled by people’s inability to pronounce Klara. Isn’t it claah-raah? Or is it something else?

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      1. The name is definitely not as common in the US, but it’s the most distinct from Claire-ah, so it should be easy…

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  2. Based on how it is written, I can’t tell if it’s Clair-uh or Clah-ruh or Clah-rah. But none of those are difficult to pronounce, and only maybe difficult to distinguish the first time upon hearing.

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  3. I’m very puzzled by people’s inability to pronounce Klara. Isn’t it claah-raah

    It’s two syllables and not very difficult ones for English speakers. It shouldn’t throw people after hearing it once or twice. I found this:

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      1. It’s more of that othering bullshit by the people terrified of anything that comes outside their microscopic comfort zone. They cannot get over that fact that you are not from around there and don’t belong there, and just keep reinforcing this belief of theirs over and over and over (“I can’t understand her! And her kid has this weird incomprehensible name! Why can’t these people learn to speak English?!”).

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    1. The later seasons of Doctor Who have a character named Clara which is pronounced similarly (except maybe less rolling of the R). So it’s clearly not even that unusual in the English speaking world.

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  4. IME extreme monolingual people (who don’t come across much language variety in their day to day lives) really do have problems understanding accents and new words and it’s not an act.

    It can be hard to understand for people here (none of whom are monolingual AFAICT) but the less variety people are exposed to the less they can deal with variety.

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