{"id":5095,"date":"2016-03-06T16:30:38","date_gmt":"2016-03-06T16:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/?p=5095"},"modified":"2026-08-25T13:15:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T12:15:34","slug":"mums-the-word-how-different-languages-say-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/en\/news\/mums-the-word-how-different-languages-say-mother","title":{"rendered":"Mum’s the word! How different languages say ‘mother’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is the day we celebrate \u2018Mother’s day\u2019 or \u2018Mothering Sunday\u2019 here in the UK.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mum is one of those words we start to use from a young age; perhaps you used ‘mumma’, ‘mother’, ‘mam’ or ‘mummy’ instead; there are many ways to say it! Some languages offer a similar word to English,<\/a> like \u2018la madre\u2019 in Spanish<\/a> and in Italian<\/a>. Typically the word for mother does start with an \u2018m\u2019 or a \u2018b\u2019 as these are soft and easy sounds when you\u2019re a child, creating the \u2018m\u2019 noise is one of the easiest ones to make. In Afrikaans <\/a>the word for mother is just \u2018ma\u2019 and in Swahili<\/a> it\u2019s \u2018mama\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Happy<\/a>
My mum and me enjoying the sunshine!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However, that’s not always the case: in Fijian<\/a> the word for mother is \u2018tina\u2019, in Kurdish<\/a> (Sorani) it is ‘daik’ and in Swiss<\/a> it is ‘d\u2019Mueter’. In other languages the m or b is replaced with a \u2018h\u2019 sound – in Japanese<\/a> mother is \u2018haha\u2019 and in Somalia<\/a> it is \u2018hooyo\u2019. Would you expect \u2018Whaea\u2019 to translate into the English word \u2018Mother\u2019? This is perhaps one of the more unusual ways of saying mother in another language (Maori<\/a>).\u00a0Interestingly in Georgian<\/a>, it is completely different to English,\u00a0with \u2018mama\u2019 meaning father and \u2018deda\u2019 for mother.<\/span><\/p>\n

When it comes to the Romance and Germanic languages, there are a lot of similarities between both \u2018mother\u2019 and \u2018father\u2019 translations. Father tends to start with a \u2018p\u2019 or a \u2018b\u2019 sound, which are also easy noises for children to make.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are some other words for ‘mother’ in different languages:<\/span><\/p>\n

Slovak<\/a> – matka<\/span><\/p>\n

Scots Gaelic<\/a> – a’ mh\u00e0thair<\/span><\/p>\n

Hungarian <\/a>– anya<\/span><\/p>\n

Albanian<\/a> – n\u00ebn\u00eb<\/span><\/p>\n

Tagalog<\/a> – nanay<\/span><\/p>\n

How do you say ‘mother’ in the language you’re learning?<\/span><\/p>\n

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mums, tinas, madres and nanays – we hope you have a lovely\u00a0day!<\/span><\/p>\n

Alex<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is the day we celebrate \u2018Mother’s day\u2019 or \u2018Mothering Sunday\u2019 here in the UK. Mum is one of those…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3985],"class_list":["post-5095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-languagelearning","tag-general"],"acf":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":5095},"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":3,"label":"Language Learning"}],"post_tag":[{"value":3985,"label":"General"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Richard Howeson","author_link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/en\/news\/author\/richard"},"comment_info":2,"category_info":[{"term_id":3,"name":"Language Learning","slug":"languagelearning","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":254,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":254,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Language Learning","category_nicename":"languagelearning","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":3985,"name":"General","slug":"general","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3985,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":135,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5095"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10425,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5095\/revisions\/10425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}