3 ms·
Japanese has a lot of words for mother and unlike in English with mom, mommy and mother, they aren’t related. The most common are okaasan (with a few variation
by wodenokoto 3y ago
Japanese has a lot of words for mother and unlike in English with mom, mommy and mother, they aren’t related.
The most common are okaasan (with a few variations of its own), haha and mama.
But mama is written with katakana suggesting it is a loan word. Which I find interesting in terms of the babble word theory.
It could also be katakana because it is considered derived from a sound like how onomatopoeia are often written in katakana, which would really support the babble theory.
- rizzaxc 3y agohaha is Chinese, so also a "loan" word
- wodenokoto 3y agoWiktionary seems to disagree, saying it’s a Japanese origin word. https://ja.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/はは https://ja.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/はは At least in modern mandarin mom is “ma”, but Chinese has so many dialects …
- numpad0 3y agoThe literary character 母 is Chinese, spoken word はは is not, and some believe old pronunciation was closer to papa.
- naniwaduni 3y agoBonus: ちち covers both titty and daddy. Food for thought. And babies too, I guess.