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Why ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ Sound So Similar in So Many Languages
- xacaxulu 11y agoMater Pater
- westiseast 11y agoIt's a nice article, but isn't this something every parent realizes after their first kid? 'Aaaah' sounds come first, then maybe an 'oh' and then the lips come in to make 'mamama' or 'bababab' and then it takes a longer time for complex words involving the tongue or non-aspirated sounds to come in (like 'teh' or 'keh').
- imron 11y agoAnd then in Finnish it's äiti.
- wmt 11y ago"Isä" and "äiti".
- rancur 11y agowhich reminds me of episode 1-- eeseetah oida-- oo, bah...ooooo bah.... eeseetah oido! oo bah...oooobahh...
- iagooar 11y agoBasque, which is one of the oldest, European languages with no direct relationship to any other modern language, uses "ama" for saying mom, and "aita" for saying dad (both putting the stress on the second "a").
- ocean3 11y agoKannada language has something simialr - amma(mom) and appa(dad).
- riffraff 11y agohungarian has "anya" for "mom" and "apa" for "dad", (although "mama" is also used sometimes but is probably a loanword). But they also look like baby sounds.
- drd93 11y agoEstonian: isa and ema
- afsina 11y ago"ana"(mom) and "ata"(dad) for Turkish "anne" and "baba" modern Turkey Turkish "mama" is baby food, or how you describe food to a baby.
- gggggggg 11y agoI am in Australia, and we say 'Mum' not 'Mom'. Does anyone know why? I have always found Mom weird.
- xacaxulu 11y agoEngland?
- a3n 11y agoBut do babies say that from the very first, when they're playing with sounds as the article says? I'm guessing not, they learn it after awhile.
- hugh4 11y agoNah, it's more of a "ma" sound with a short "a". Now what's interesting is that this sound is closer to how an American might pronounce a short "o" (I think of a southern belle fanning herself and saying "lawd it's haaaht") and how an Englishman might say a short "u". It's not exactly the same vowel but I can see how it develops. Both versions of English think babies say "mama", but you can't shorten that to "mam" because you'd use a different "a" to pronounce that.
- duaneb 11y agoI say Mum in the US. I don't think there's a hard or fast rule.
- colordrops 11y agoI don't believe there are any hard and fast rules in the English language. It's all convention, some of which has a very high percentage of adherents, and some people in high towers claiming that one way is more correct than another. But you will find that every "rule" has some form in some region that breaks it. There's the concept of an official grammar and vocabulary in some languages, such as French, with the Académie française, but even then people don't follow the rules. English has no such official committee.
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- gweinberg 11y agoEveryone with a brain the size a walnut already knows this: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1581 http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1581
- princeb 11y agojapanese falls completely outside this generalization. edit: on further investigation mama and baba are used very informally but it appears these are loanwords.
- euske 11y agoTraditionally, they were "o-toh" for dad and "o-kah" for mom. You might add "-chan" or "-san" or remove the "o-" prefix, depending on your taste. Personally, a phrase like "every language" immediately flags a BS sign to me.
- ss248 11y agoKids use okasan/otosan only when they are talking about third party mom/dad. They use haha (which make even more sense, according to article) or chichi when speaking about their own mom and dad.
- princeb 11y agohaha and chichi are more formal.
- Steko 11y agoIt really depends what you mean by 'traditionally'. My reading of [1] is that the 'ka' reading is one of many although it's become more prevelant in modern usage. [2] says that 'papa' was most common in Old Japanese. [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%AF%8D#Japanese https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%AF%8D#Japanese [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa
- ryenus 11y agoJapanese has 'chichi' (dad) and 'haha' (mom)
- Steko 11y agoJapan is a linguistic minefield and defies generalization. In Ainu 'nanna' is mother and in Okinawan it's 'anma'. In Old Japanese there's 'haha' (and variants - 'papa' appears to have been prevelent in Old Japanese, see link in cousin post) and 'amo'. Also note: while 'mama' is a loanword it's overwhelmingly what babies call their mothers in Japan i.e. it has outcompeted other words likely for the same reasons as said in the article.
- jonnathanson 11y agoI guess I'll be the geek who brings Tolkien into this, but for the curious: even the Elvish word for mom is basically a phonetic equivalent to "mommy." (I'll leave it to someone more enterprising to give us the Klingon word.)
- Thorondor 11y agoIt's SoS in Klingon. I wonder what this tells us about Klingon physiology? After reading the article, the words for 'mother' and 'father' actually seem like interesting pieces of information to learn about any newly discovered race of aliens.
- eru 11y agoAnd whether they even have the concepts.
- avodonosov 11y agoImho it's an obvious thing. Strange that it takes so song article
- sgustard 11y agoIn Korean "mam-ma" means food.
- enraged_camel 11y agoVery similar in Turkish! Minor difference: "mama". Mother is "ana" (traditional) or "anne" (contemporary).
- utku_karatas2 11y agoYou'd be surprised how similar Turkish and Korean actually is. Both coming from Altaic language group the grammatical structure is very similar. It blew my mind when I first learned about that. Take a look at this... yap-mak == ka-da yap-ma == ka-jima yap-ma-yin == ka-jima-yo They even have the same kinship rules as us (Abi, Abla, etc.). The more I'm digging in Korean culture the more similarities I'm finding during my short stay here.
- jeffwmair 11y agoAnd also in Korean to say mom is "oh-moh", with emphasis on the 'moh' part. Sounds like ma as in ma and pa.
- Steko 11y agoImportant to remember both that the same word can mean different things in a language and that multiple words can mean the same thing. What a baby tends to call his mother in a language might not be the stock dictionary translation. In Korean, 엄마 (eomma) [ʌmma] and 아빠 (appa) are mom and dad in informal language... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa
- myVocatio 11y agoIn India where there are dozens of languages, this plays out interestingly... Granted, in few indian languages 'M' sound is not there.. but it uses even more basic sound 'aa'(as in used by babies earlier than 'm' sound) e.g. Aai in Marathi etc - or a similar Baa in Gujrati..
- Manishearth 11y agoThere's a joke in a Marathi children's book, which goes roughly as follows: A: Know why we call our mothers "Aai"? B: No, why? A: The reason is because "aaaaa" is the sound you make when hurt or in trouble, and it's your first instinct to call to your mother for help in such cases. B: Nonsense. Do English-speakers^ say "maaaaaaaa" when hurt? I think Indic languages have almost every permutation of "a" and "m" for "mother" -- we have "Aai", "amma", "maaa", "mamma", ... ^Might have been Hindi speakers, I forget now.
- sundarurfriend 11y agoThe author, John McWhorter, is a great guy to listen to. His TED talk[1] is interesting, his TED-Ed lessons[2] are even more interesting, and his "Story of Human Language"[3] course is so enormously interesting and fun, I listen to it as entertainment when bored. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk https://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_la... [2] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ted+ed+john+mcwhorter https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ted+ed+john+mcw... [3] http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/story-of-human-language.html http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/story-of-human-langua...
- captainmuon 11y agoI think its not just a matter of naming the closest person with the easiest sound, and the second closest person with the second easiest one. You know how parents say they can tell by the cries of their baby what the baby needs? After the birth of our kid I found there is actually some truth to it. When he was hungry, he smacked his lips (like when sucking) and it made a mamamama sound, or myammyammyam or maybe even nomnomnom (overlaying the crying). When he had pain, it sounded more like auääää (excuse the umlaut) or auayyyy, due to the way he suddenly opened his mouth. I can imagine this is the source of expletives like Ouch or Aua in many languages. Now that he is a bit older (~10 months) he has more control over the sounds he makes, and is experimenting with speech, but the mamama and auäää seems to stick. Funnily, he seems to say "daddy" to me, although thats not the word in this region of the world (that would be papa) and I don't know where he got it from. Also, its too early to tell if he is consciously using it for me or just experimenting with interesting sounds. I guess parents tend to overinterpret the first utterances of their kids a lot :-)
- filoeleven 11y ago> You know how parents say they can tell by the cries of their baby what the baby needs? After the birth of our kid I found there is actually some truth to it. In fact there are five or more "words" that newborns have that can tell you what they need. A friend showed me a video from Oprah discussing it. Below is the first link I found describing them. Her newborn nearly always calmed down immediately when she responded to him based on what she heard. I was surprised I'd never heard of these before and that they don't appear to be well-known among new parents. http://www.whattoexpect.com/blogs/motherhoodinthemountains/newborn-cries-the-five-cries-you-need-to-know http://www.whattoexpect.com/blogs/motherhoodinthemountains/n...