I Now Mispronounce You the Likely Next Mayor of New York City

Addressing a largely progressive crowd at a rally for the likely next mayor of New York City, the centrist governor, Kathy Hochul, was out of her element. But she didn’t do herself any favors by mispronouncing Zohran Mamdani’s name as “Mandami” — no fewer than four times. That’s on top of the many times she mispronounced it last summer.

She was in good company. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is also running for mayor, has uttered the same mispronunciation many times, including on the debate stage, where Mamdani tartly instructed him to “get it right.” The exchange, which went viral on social media, was manna for the Mamdani campaign, yet Cuomo has continued doing it. And so have plenty of other people, including many in prominent positions who could presumably have taken the time to overcome their error.

So the question has arisen as to why. Early in the campaign, when Mamdani was the longest of long shots, it was easy to assume that failure to learn his name reflected a failure to take him seriously. As his outsider bid gained momentum, the tongue-twisting was easier to read as deliberate incivility. Or perhaps it was outright racism, the same “otherizing” impulse that made some right-wing critics take such evident pleasure in articulating the “Hussein” in the name Barack Hussein Obama.

Mispronouncing someone’s name certainly can be a form of ridicule or dismissal. Take President Trump’s absolute insistence on calling his opponent in the presidential election “Ka-MAH-la.” You may have gotten a similar vibe when Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, somehow came up with “Zamdami.” But malice is not the only possible explanation for these flubs.

Put aside the optics for a moment. As a matter of pure linguistics, it would be surprising if people didn’t have trouble with the name Mamdani. That’s because of its particular combination of sounds — and what’s known as assimilation, the process by which the way a sound is articulated is shaped to some degree by the sound that follows.

Bear with me for a moment as I get mechanical. The letter m is pronounced by putting the lips together, while the letter d is pronounced on the ridge right behind the teeth. If you’re anticipating a d sound, it’s natural to make the preceding m sound further back in the mouth, with the tongue on that same ridge. Try making an m with your tongue on that ridge. What do you get? An n. And thus “Mamdani” can become “Mandani.”

Assimilation is normal, a documentable effect in every language. The original Latin word for “impossible” was “inpossibilis.” The n became an m because the p ahead of it is pronounced with the lips. I’ll be teaching the students in my Introduction to Linguistics class about this in a couple weeks.

But then, why are people saying “Mandami” instead of “Mandani”? Because when we encounter new words, the way we pronounce words is affected by which sound sequences we are most familiar with. “Liberry” happens because “berry” (and words that rhyme with it, such as “very”) are more common than the sequence “brary.” “Mandami” happens because that’s a more familiar sequence of sounds. Think about “mommy” or “Tommy,” or for that matter “salami.”

“Mandami,” then, is a sign of what happens when people speaking any language encounter words, in particular words from other languages, that have unfamiliar shapes. Until the second half of the 20th century, in America it was common to say “raviola” instead of “ravioli,” because “ola” felt more familiar, perhaps from words like “cola,” than the more Italian-sounding “oli.” The way we say “tomato” is technically a mispronunciation of what began as “tomate” pronounced “toe-MAH-tay.” It felt right to make it rhyme with “potato.” Let’s call the whole thing off.

I am reminded of this phenomenon every time someone mispronounces my name, which happens with some regularity. It must be the ease with which an English-speaking mouth says “waters” that leads many a person to mistake “McWhorter” for “McWaters” or even sometimes just “Waters.” (Why people often think my name is James is less obvious to me.)

In case after case, experience shapes pronunciation. In France, it was common to refer to the singer and dancer Josephine Baker as “La Baker,” pronouncing it “bah-CARE,” because this was how one would pronounce the spelling in French. The Japanese adopt English words to the sound patterns of their language, such that “baseball” is “beesubooru,” “strike” is “sutoraiku,” and Mamdani would be rolling-pinned out into “Mamadani.”

Speech is rapid and largely subconsciously controlled. We do not slowly approach an unfamiliar sound pattern, examine it, take a deep breath and execute it. We get tripped up on it, like driving through a pothole. Between clashing sound systems and spelling eccentricities, a nation as diverse as ours must allow for an occasionally bumpy ride.

My favorite example is the Kosciuszko Bridge, named after the Polish general Tadeusz Kosciuszko. A respectable approximation to the Polish pronunciation would be “kuh-SHOOSH-ko,” and it would hardly be an Olympic feat to master. But between the unfamiliarity of the sound pattern and the challenge of the spelling, New Yorkers unabashedly settle for the jolly mess of “koss-kee-OSS-ko” and variations upon it. Of course, this would be an utterly rude way to address a living person, but I suspect General Kosciuszko, who fought in the Revolutionary War, was used to it.

I once heard two colleagues grumbling about the ways that people mispronounced their names. One of those colleagues was Italian; the other was a Black Muslim. They took it as an unquestionable sign of disrespect. I thought they could have eased up a little, given that they themselves surely had occasion to screw up unfamiliar names. It’s quite difficult not to.

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By the way, I highly recommend Michael Chad Hoeppner’s “Don’t Say Um: How to Communicate Effectively to Live a Better Life.” I often suggest that in public speaking, it gets you a long way to simply avoid saying “um” (and to hold way back on “like” and “sort of”). Hoeppner gets you still further, genially instructing readers on how to be comfortable in front of an audience and get their message across. He even provides exercises you can do on your own to make public speaking, of all things, fun.