8 ms·
Why babies in every country on Earth say 'mama'
- rickyconnolly 13y agoTheir story checks out. Using google translate, I can't find a single language that does not have a 'mama' or something very similar.
- drdaeman 13y agoFun thing I found on Wiktionary is that in Georgian, /mɑmɑ/ is a word for father[1] and mother is /dɛdɑ/[2]. Add: oh, and it's "panjo" in Esperanto... :) Other languages outside of rule may possibly include Eshtehardi, Fijian, Greenlandic, Inuktitut, Igbo, Kyrgyz, Malay, Maori, Mari, Moksha, Thai and Vietnamese (suspections per http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mum#Translations http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mum#Translations and http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mother#Translations http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mother#Translations). Personally, I've unfortunately never even heard about half of those languages, and not familiar with the ones I've heard about to the extent I can confirm or opposite. [1]: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%83%9B%E1%83%90%E1%83%9B%E1%83%90#Georgian http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%83%9B%E1%83%90%E1%83%9B%E1... [2]: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%83%93%E1%83%94%E1%83%93%E1%83%90#Georgian http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%83%93%E1%83%94%E1%83%93%E1...
- kiba 13y agoAs a member of a Vietnamese speaking household, mom is still vaguely similar to English. Of course, I could be wrong since I have moderate hearing loss.
- sunnybythesea 13y agoMost Indian languages also follow this pattern, however Marathi uses 'Aai' for mother
- shrikant 13y agoThe "pure" Tamil word for mother is "thaai". There's no relation between the two languages, however.
- sunnybythesea 13y agoThat's interesting, I never knew that...thanks
- unhammer 13y agoYou didn't look well enough: http://translate.google.com/#en/ka/mom%0Amother%0Adad%0Afather http://translate.google.com/#en/ka/mom%0Amother%0Adad%0Afath... (Though for some reason, GT translates English "mama" into Georgian "mama", meaning 'father'. But then, one should really not use GT for linguistic research …)
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago“Every language has a word for water. In Swahili they call it maji. In Dutch, it's vand.” ‘Vand’ is not an existing word in the Dutch language. The Dutch word for water is ‘water’.
- Ives 13y ago"Vand" is apparently Danish for "water". I guess the author isn't very good with languages.
- jeremyswank 13y agoin georgian, 'mama' is father, and 'deda' is mother. it is a striking exception.
- aardvark179 13y agoIs it just Georgian or the entire Kartvelian language family?
- jeremyswank 13y agothe short answer is i don't know. however the kartvelian group consists of only four languages, geographically near each other, and they are 'closely related[1]' according to wikipedia. one might expect a some degree of mutual intelligibility, as between czech and slovak, for example. [1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartvelian_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartvelian_languages)
- zura 13y agoAnd 'papa' is a synonym of grandfather in eastern Georgia (e.g. Kakheti). Regarding the first "word" (a nonsense actually) - it is usually "Aghu". Even before a baby starts talking anything, parents encourage them - "Say aghuu, aghuu" :)
- brisance 13y agoMama in Mandarin Chinese literally means mother.
- slygent 13y agoStrictly speaking, "ma1ma" is equivalent to "mummy/mommy" and "mu3" is the formal "mother".
- rimantas 13y agoThe same in Lithuanian. The more formal version is "motina".
- gurkendoktor 13y agoI always assumed that it was a loanword though, and that 娘, 母親 were the "original" words for mother. Curiously, "ma" is always the first syllable that is taught to students of Mandarin (to explain the tones).
- gurkendoktor 13y agoApparently it is not a Western loanword - http://wold.livingsources.org/word/77161647552647739 http://wold.livingsources.org/word/77161647552647739
- meritt 13y ago> The "m" sound is the easiest for a baby mouth to make when wrapped around a warm delicious breast.
- tsm 13y agoInterestingly, in Spanish "mama" means "breast". The intimate word for mother is "mamá" (stress on the second syllable, not the first).
- darkhorn 13y agoIn baby-Turkish "mama" means meal. And "meme" means breast.
- btw0 13y agoEven more interestingly, "ma(ma)" means breast too in the dialect of my home town which locates at the central part of China.
- Samuel_Michon 13y agoWell, Spanish is a Romance language[1]. ‘Mamma’ is Latin for ‘breast’, so that makes sense. It’s where words like ‘mammal’ and ‘mammogram’ come from. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LatinEuropeans.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LatinEuropeans.png
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- gjulianm 13y agoIn spanish 'mama' and 'papa' are the actual words for mom and dad, respectively (and IIRC they are too in italian). Funny that other languages don't use the same simple sounds for both. Auto-nitpick: Well, actually it's not 'mama' but 'mamá' (same with 'papa'), the accent is in the last syllable
- MarkSweep 13y agoIn Japanese you use "haha" and "chichi" to refer to your own mother and father (respectively), instead of the more formal "okaasan" and "otousan".
- dsego 13y agoIn spoken croatian, mama is mother, tata is father. In some dialects baba is grandmother or old lady and dida (deda) is the grandfather.
- klez 13y agoIn Italian, mama is "mamma", dad is "pap�" (in pap� you stress the second syllabe)
- yen223 13y agoIn Mandarin too - mother is 'mama', and father is 'baba'
- dsrguru 13y agoThis is a highly contested subject in linguistics and very much not definitive like the article makes it out to be. There are many languages where mama does mean mother, but there are many languages where it does not. In some cases, you get the opposite. In proto-Old Japanese, for example, papa meant mother. In Georgian, mama means father and deda means mother. I don't know enough about the mama/papa topic to comment further, but a quick Google suggests that this paper is somewhat well regarded by at least some people: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=where-do-mama2.pdf&site=1 https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=where...
- FraaJad 13y agoYup. In the South Indian language Tulu, "ma" root word (ie., Amme) is used to refer to the father and the "pa" for mother (ie.,Appe). Also, mama = Uncle in many Indian languages (both Dravidian and Indo-European).
- iuguy 13y agoIn Turkish, mother is "anne" (pronounced ah-neh) and father is "baba". I don't know whether or not Turkish babies make the mama sounds or not, not having experienced them doing so.
- melvinmt 13y agoWell, "mama" in Turkish is a nickname for breast milk. So if a foreign man in Istanbul is calling his mother "mama" all the time, expect some giggles.
- darkhorn 13y agoIn rural areas and during the pre-republican period mother is "ana", in Turkish.
- oakaz 13y ago"Mamu" means "Mother" for Balkanian Turks.
- shared4you 13y ago
- pestaa 13y ago"Mama" in Hungarian means grandmother. On the very very rare occassions when I heard a Hungarian child call her mother 'mama', it felt really awkward and strange, and always suspected western cultural influences (i.e. western dad or moving between countries, etc.).
- beothorn 13y agoIn portuguese 'mamar' means to suck, usually associated with babies. Mother is 'mãe' or 'mamãe'. Actually, the r is usually dropped when speaking, so 'mamar' is usally spoken 'mama'.
- foobarqux 13y agoThe article presents a hypothesis without experimental evidence.
- fosap 13y agoBecause the experiments to conclude the "natural" language by not teaching children any language at all are highly unethical.
- jdminhbg 13y agoBut not unheard of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experiments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experiment...
- foobarqux 13y agoI am sceptical of the claim that "mama" comes from the act of suckling. That claim is unsupported by evidence as far as I can tell from the links in the article and is reminiscent of behaviorism. Verifying that hypothesis does not require depriving anyone of language and may be able to be achieved through observational studies of babies of babies that are in pre-existing situations where they do not suckle breasts and in cases where they have no interaction with their mothers. Notwithstanding the above, if experimental evidence cannot be produce a hypothesis cannot be proven and the claim should be appropriately discounted.
- unhammer 13y agoBut the hypothesis is that the word for mother _in a certain language_ comes from that situation. Those breast-deprived babies you observe would not be creating their own language (unless you do more than just observe :-/), so what would you be observing? A difference in frequency of ma-sounds from other babies?
- foobarqux 13y ago> But the hypothesis is that the word for mother _in a certain language_ comes from that situation. No it isn't. The hypothesis described in the article explains the purported cause for the universality of the word "Mama". And yes you would observe if the frequency of "ma" was lower which would tell you if the "ma" sound is behaviorally induced by suckling which is the claim described in the article.
- bbayer 13y agoInteresting read. In Turkish 'mama' = baby food and also 'meme' = breasts. Also it looks like there is connection to word 'mammal'
- Ihmahr 13y agoI am dutch and I can tell you that the third sentence of that article is wrong. 'vand' doesn't even resemble a dutch word.
- ifix 13y agoNo, 'vand' is Danish/Norwegian for water.
- davidroberts 13y agoIn Japanese, the work "Manma" is a baby-talk word that means food. "Mama" is used for mother sometimes, but I think this is a recent influence from the West. "Haha" is the normal (non-polite) word for mother, although children are taught to use the more polite "o-kaa-san." "Haha" still has those repeated "ah" sounds.
- pwim 13y agoHaha isn't the normal word for mother, you only use it when talking about your own mother to someone else in a formal setting. Mama has the most casual sound to it. Okaasan (or one of its derivatives) is slightly more formal. Depending on the family, you might use either when talking to your mother.
- antonios 13y ago"The child is recognizing that the hairy flat-chested lunk trying to sing "Little Bird" to it is NOT Primary Food Dispersal Unit #1." Laughed out loud with this. Nice article!
- spudlyo 13y agoThe Basque (a language isolate) word for mother is 'ama'.
- ojilles 13y ago3rd sentence is already wrong. > "In Dutch, it's vand." Should be: > "In Danish, it's vand." or > "In Dutch, it's water."
- negamax 13y agoThis recalled a childhood memory. When I was extremely young my first words were 'mum' and I used to refer that for thirst. So mum meant 'give me water' and since mother used to be around, she was the one to provide it. Or it could be that mother taught me to associate 'mum' with water as that was the word I could pronounce first. Hmm..
- Mz 13y agoIt is not universal but it seems fairly close to universal. I do think mmm comes as an early sound in part because of suckling. If a baby can't suckle, it likely won't live. The article is being a bit humorous about it but I made the same basic point to someone recently while discussing this.
- eavc 13y agoI've recently wondered if shaking the head to signify disagreement or refusal stems from that being an effective way for a child to refuse food it doesn't want. My son shakes his head almost reflexively, and it makes it very hard to feed him something he doesn't want.
- gbog 13y agoProbably not. When I was in Nepal, I noted shaking head left and right means "yes". And "no" is done with the hand open, rolling it on the axis of the arm ("couci-couça" in French). BTW Children are sponges, they copy you. For instance my wife and I do not like that much fruits, and our kid don't either, which is sad.
- kzrdude 13y agoHere is an article I saw recently about word roots with possible global reach, called "Global Etymologies" http://jdbengt.net/articles/Global.pdf http://jdbengt.net/articles/Global.pdf It's quite interesting to just look at the examples. It's proposed that certain word roots might end up in different places in different languages, i.e. what means knee in one language can be close to elbow in another. Reocurring is of course that body parts and mothers, which is common humanity, is a big part of the words examined.
- meric 13y agoIs someone looking through my comments to write articles about? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5671337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5671337 Probably just a coincidence but feels a bit weird.
- tokenadult 13y agoMy late father-in-law spoke a language, one of the Austronesian aboriginal languages of Taiwan, in which the word /mama/ indicated "father" rather than "mother." Several languages are like that, and some human languages do not have the word /mama/. The article cites Roman Jakobson on the issue, and he is the correct person to cite, but the article doesn't digest the findings of linguistics (a subject I have studied) helpfully. There isn't any universal word "mama," and there isn't any universal association of one sound string or a small subset of sound strings with feeding infants. AFTER EDIT: Hurrah for the earlier comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5694995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5694995 which links to a much better article https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=where-do-mama2.pdf&site=1 https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=where... and well deserves your upvote.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- naughtysriram 13y agoProbably it was meant to be "mumma" not "mama". Though the interesting part I see is "mma"/"umma"/"amma"
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- alok-g 13y agoIt's probably the other way around. Babies learn their first sounds, and languages, as they develop, assign those words to the moms and dads.
- anuraj 13y agoIn my language Malayalam, mother is 'Amma'. Maman or more correctly 'Ammavan' is uncle.