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Mama for mother nearly universal? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| orion Senior Member United States Joined 7021 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 39 22 November 2005 at 11:33am | IP Logged |
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I read once that the reason many languages use "mama", or some similar variant for "mother" is that this is the first syllable that a human baby can make, and that the baby is in close contact with his/her mother during this formative period. It seems that a high number of languages in the Indo-European group do have a very similar word for mother. I believe Mandarin also uses ma (I don't remember which tone) for mother. What about other languages outside the Indo-European group?
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 39 22 November 2005 at 12:18pm | IP Logged |
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Try this link:
http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/query.cgi?root=config&morph o=0&basename=\data\eura\globet Type the word 'mother' in the field 'meaning' and run a search It will lead to suspected proto-words for mother in various language groups. You can then move into sub-groups and see the cognates in many languages. This website is part of an online project to put together etymologies of the world's languages. The founder of the site, Sergei Starostin died in September, but his colleagues are still working on it. These linguists are the ones who support research into examining the links between supposedly unrelated families of languages. Their work is similar to that done by Greenberg, Doglopovsky, Ruhlen et al. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7015 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 39 22 November 2005 at 5:43pm | IP Logged |
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In Spanish, a term of endearment for grandmother is "mama" and for mother "mamá".
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| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7077 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 4 of 39 22 November 2005 at 6:07pm | IP Logged |
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Korean uses 'omoni' for 'mother' and 'oma' for 'mum(my)'
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| boaziano Triglot Newbie Italy Joined 6960 days ago 21 posts - 21 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Italian*, Sanskrit, English Studies: Hindi, Tibetan, Tamil | Message 5 of 39 24 November 2005 at 10:04am | IP Logged |
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In Albanian - I think the only exception in the Indo-european family - the word for mother is "nënë" and the word for sister is "motër" (this is a field for linguistic anthropology).
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| hagen Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6960 days ago 171 posts - 179 votes 6 sounds Speaks: German*, English, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 6 of 39 25 November 2005 at 3:03am | IP Logged |
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There's s short paragraph about this in "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language" (second edition, p. 177):
"Sometimes some quite specific correspondences have been noted, such as the tendency for languages to express 'mother' with a nasal, and 'father' with an oral front consonant. Again, the pattern is not universal. In Georgian, máma means 'father'; and in a number of South Asian languages (e.g. Tamil, Telugu), mama means 'mother's brother'." So it's not universal, but it seems to be very widespread for the obvious reason that 'ma' is very easy to pronounce. (It's first tone - high level - in Mandarin, by the way.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Skandinav Hexaglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 6887 days ago 139 posts - 145 votes Speaks: Danish*, English, German, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian | Message 7 of 39 23 January 2006 at 5:33pm | IP Logged |
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In Danish we don't use Mama and Papa. Mother is Moder, Mama (Mum?) is Mor (or other variants depending on dialect e.g. Måddå). Father is Fader, Papa (Dad?) is Far. When I grew up, a friend of mine - he was half Dutch btw. - always called his parents Mama and Papa. At the time I sort envied that, because I thought of these terms as really Continental European...
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| Alfonso Octoglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 6861 days ago 511 posts - 536 votes Speaks: Biblical Hebrew, Spanish*, French, English, Tzotzil, Italian, Portuguese, Ancient Greek Studies: Nahuatl, Tzeltal, German | Message 8 of 39 02 March 2006 at 4:59pm | IP Logged |
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In Maya Tsotsil and some dialects of Maya Tseltal the word for mama is "me'" and in Tseltal is "nan". Even though these are not Indo-European languages, some kind of similitude is evident. Weird, doesn't it? Edited by Alfonso on 03 May 2006 at 10:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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