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It says Chinese wasn't included in the seven family of languages. Yet, I, a english and cantonese speaker, couldn't help but notice these two words which sound
by meric 14y ago
It says Chinese wasn't included in the seven family of languages.
Yet, I, a english and cantonese speaker, couldn't help but notice these two words which sound similar in both languages.
Mother is "ma" in English, and also "ma" in Cantonese.
Father is "pa" or "dad" in English, and "ba" or "deh" in Cantonese.
Remarkably similar, considering both languages are considered by linguists to be practically completely unrelated.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- meric 14y agoThose two aren't original terms, they're merely more formal terms. (e.g. mother and father rather than ma and pa). Cantonese sounds more similar to Classical Chinese than Mandarin does. According to Cantonese wikipedia for "ba"[1] and "ma"[2], in ancient times the word "父" sounds close to the modern day cantonese "爸" (ba) and likewise for "母" and "媽" (ma). [1] http://zh-yue.wikipedia.org/wiki/阿爸 http://zh-yue.wikipedia.org/wiki/阿爸 [2] https://zh-yue.wikipedia.org/wiki/阿媽 https://zh-yue.wikipedia.org/wiki/阿媽 I doubt it can be explained away as merely Western influence. Perhaps it's English that received some Chinese influence? ;) I heard the word "kowtow" originated from China, too.
- madaxe 14y agoThe Silk Road (the actual road) caused a high degree of intermingling between mesopotamian and asian populations throughout the last 4,000 years. Rather than having the same stem, it's more likely that these cognates snuck in later.
- mkl 14y agoThe words are similar because these are some of the first sounds babies learn to make.