{"id":6288,"date":"2018-08-20T10:09:06","date_gmt":"2018-08-20T10:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/?p=6288"},"modified":"2020-07-13T13:05:24","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T13:05:24","slug":"why-does-mama-mean-mother-in-almost-every-language-on-earth-and-are-there-exceptions-to-this-rule-georgians-japanese-and-hawaiians-might-somehow-be-involved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/why-does-mama-mean-mother-in-almost-every-language-on-earth-and-are-there-exceptions-to-this-rule-georgians-japanese-and-hawaiians-might-somehow-be-involved\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Does \u201cMama\u201d Mean \u201cMother\u201d in Almost Every Language on Earth?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Linguist Brian Loo Soon Hua helps answer the question.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walk along the streets of Beijing and listen carefully to the little toddlers calling for their mothers while out on an evening stroll and what do you hear? \u5988\u5988 or m\u0101ma<\/em>. On the other side of the world you\u2019ll hear Spanish children crying for mam\u00e1<\/em> while Italian and French babies want their mamma<\/em> and maman <\/em>respectively. That\u2019s not all. In East Africa, Swahili-speakers say mama<\/em> and Arab-speaking children often call their mothers yemma<\/em>. And in tropical Malaysia, it\u2019s not unusual for mothers to be addressed as mak<\/em>. The sound ma <\/em>is almost universal in Europe, and very common even among completely unrelated languages spoken in faraway places. How did this come about? How did one syllable become so deeply entrenched in children\u2019s vocabularies the world over?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If that\u2019s not curious enough, what about the way we say \u201cfather\u201d? Looking at words referring to fathers, the most common ones are basically variations of baba<\/em>, papa<\/em>, dada<\/em> and tata<\/em>. Even if English speakers have the word \u201cfather\u201d, most children would rather say \u201cdaddy\u201d or \u201cpa\u201d or some variation of these. The mystery deepens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some linguists believe that the simplest explanation lies in the very first sounds babies make. Hungry babies only have to open their mouths wide and scream AAAAAAH<\/strong> to pronounce their first vowel, A<\/em>. Later, as they start playing around with their mouths, all they have to do is to close and open their lips to make an M<\/em>, their very first consonant. Voil\u00e0, they\u2019ve discovered another sound!  Adults hearing babies making this charming string of mamama<\/em> sounds might think that the babies are calling out to them<\/em>. A mother would then naturally assume that she\u2019s the one being addressed, and so would refer to herself as mama<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another theory is that babies naturally produce nasal murmuring sounds, like a very soft mhmh-mhmh<\/em> while breastfeeding. Indeed, mamma<\/em> means \u201cbreast\u201d in Latin and this also happens to be the source of both \u201cmammary\u201d and \u201cmammal\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what about \u201cpapa\u201d, \u201cdaddy\u201d and the other names children call their fathers? Well, once babies learn to say \u201cma\u201d or \u201cmama\u201d and naturally start toying around with their newfound gift of speech, they soon discover that if they hold their lips close together with more force and for a longer time, or if they puff air out from their mouths while doing that, they will inevitably make \u201cba-\u201c or \u201cpa-\u201c sounds. Progressing from this discovery, they might even start experimenting by moving their tongues about inside their mouths as they babble. When they figure out that they can also make sounds by raising the tips of their tongues and touching them against the soft ridge behind their front gums, they end up producing \u201cta-\u201c or \u201cda-\u201c sounds. Noticing their babies babbling with these exciting new sounds, proud fathers now think that they\u2019re the ones being addressed!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, there are notable exceptions to this. In Georgian, for some reason, the usual meanings seem to have been switched around: deda <\/em>means \u201cmother\u201d and mama <\/em>means \u201cfather\u201d! In ancient Japanese, \u201cmother\u201d used to be pronounced papa<\/em> and \u201cfather\u201d used to be titi<\/em> although the pronunciation has shifted to haha<\/em> and chichi <\/em>in modern Japanese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hawaiian is even more interesting, as it doesn\u2019t even have specific words for \u201cmother\u201d and \u201cfather\u201d! Yes, that\u2019s right, in the Hawaiian language all relatives of one\u2019s parents\u2019 generation are simply called makua<\/em>. A mother is a makua hine <\/em>or \u201cfemale makua\u201d and this term equally applies to one\u2019s mother\u2019s sisters and female cousins, one\u2019s father\u2019s sisters and female cousins, as well as the wives of the mother\u2019s brothers and the wives of the father\u2019s brothers! Makua hine <\/em>thus covers the semantic range of the English words \u201cmother\u201d and \u201caunt\u201d. Likewise, one\u2019s father is one\u2019s makua k\u0101ne <\/em>or \u201cmale makua\u201d, and one would also use this to mean \u201cfather\u2019s brothers and male cousins\u201d, \u201cmother\u2019s brothers and male cousins\u201d, as well as \u201chusbands of one\u2019s father\u2019s sisters\u201d and \u201chusbands of one\u2019s mother\u2019s sisters\u201d! Makua k\u0101ne, <\/em>therefore, corresponds to both the English terms \u201cfather\u201d and \u201cuncle\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, the most extreme case is that of the Amazonian Pirah\u00e3 language. The Pirah\u00e3 tribe use a single word, ba\u00edxi<\/em>, to refer to one\u2019s mother, father, aunts, uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers! It is used to refer to anyone worthy of respect or to whom one wishes to express submission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can safely say that the profusion of similar words for \u201cmother\u201d and \u201dfather\u201d in a huge number of languages, related and unrelated, is largely due to the natural development of speech in babies. There are, however, quite a few interesting exceptions, proving that languages can be unpredictable, complex and above all, fun to learn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linguist Brian Loo Soon Hua helps answer the question. Walk along the streets of Beijing and listen carefully to the little toddlers calling for their mothers while out on an evening stroll and what do you hear? \u5988\u5988 or m\u0101ma. On the other side of the world you\u2019ll hear Spanish children crying for mam\u00e1 while … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1635],"tags":[1649,1439],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6288"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}