
Why babies in every country on Earth say 'mama' - Lightning
http://theweek.com/article/index/243809/why-babies-in-every-country-on-earth-say-mama
======
dsrguru
This 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...](https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=where-
do-mama2.pdf&site=1)

~~~
shared4you
Finnish = äiti

Hungarian = anya

Kannada = ತಾಯಿ (taayi) ... "avva" sometimes colloquial.

Telugu = తల్లి (talli)

~~~
pygy_
äiti, anya (pronounced ~aaya) and avva are still compatible with the
explanation.

The Telugu word is the formal name (corresponding to mother on Wikipedia). Are
you familiar with the language?

We'd need statistics on the frequency of the first consonant utterance, and
see if it correllates with the distribution of the names given to mothers by
babies.

~~~
shared4you
Yes, Telugu is my mother-tongue and Kannada is my first-language. In spoken
Telugu today, 'amma' is far more common than 'talli'. In written Telugu, both
are equally common. 'talli' has secondary meaning of just refering to any
female. For example, "chitti talli" (little girl), "talli-tandrulu" (mother-
father, i.e., parents), etc. Similar remarks apply to Kannada. Avva is
informal and more common in rural dialects.

~~~
akandiah
> In spoken Telugu today, 'amma' is far more common than 'talli'.

That's intriguing, because 'amma' is the Tamil word for mother.

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Samuel_Michon
_“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
"Vand" is apparently Danish for "water". I guess the author isn't very good
with languages.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Would definitely not be the first person to confuse the Danish and the Dutch,
:p

~~~
unhammer
Because they start with D? They sound so completely different …

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davidroberts
In 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
Haha 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.

------
tokenadult
My 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>

which links to a much better article

[https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=where...](https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=where-
do-mama2.pdf&site=1)

and well deserves your upvote.

------
tsm
Interestingly, in Spanish "mama" means "breast". The intimate word for mother
is "mamá" (stress on the second syllable, not the first).

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Well, 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>

------
pestaa
"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.).

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Ihmahr
I am dutch and I can tell you that the third sentence of that article is
wrong. 'vand' doesn't even resemble a dutch word.

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meritt
> The "m" sound is the easiest for a baby mouth to make when wrapped around a
> warm delicious breast.

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foobarqux
The article presents a hypothesis without experimental evidence.

~~~
fosap
Because the experiments to conclude the "natural" language by not teaching
children any language at all are highly unethical.

~~~
foobarqux
I 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
But 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
> 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.

~~~
unhammer
It's still about words that are part of a language, not about sounds made by
one baby. The universality was about the sounds becoming part of the language.

The process of creating a new word in language is not the same as the process
of interpreting sounds as belonging to a certain word in a language. So you
still have that bridge to gap between "higher frequency of ma" and how the
word "mama" was created. Perhaps it's convincing, I'm not sure.

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ojilles
3rd sentence is already wrong.

> "In Dutch, it's vand."

Should be:

> "In Danish, it's vand."

or

> "In Dutch, it's water."

------
rickyconnolly
Their story checks out.

Using google translate, I can't find a single language that does not have a
'mama' or something very similar.

~~~
drdaeman
Fun 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>
and <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...](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%83%9B%E1%83%90%E1%83%9B%E1%83%90#Georgian)

[2]:
[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%83%93%E1%83%94%E1%83%93%E1...](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%83%93%E1%83%94%E1%83%93%E1%83%90#Georgian)

~~~
kiba
As 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.

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jeremyswank
in georgian, 'mama' is father, and 'deda' is mother. it is a striking
exception.

~~~
aardvark179
Is it just Georgian or the entire Kartvelian language family?

~~~
jeremyswank
the 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>)

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gjulianm
In 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
In Japanese you use "haha" and "chichi" to refer to your own mother and father
(respectively), instead of the more formal "okaasan" and "otousan".

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eavc
I'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
Probably 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.

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kzrdude
Here is an article I saw recently about word roots with possible global reach,
called "Global Etymologies" <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.

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negamax
This 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..

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Mz
It 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.

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meric
Is someone looking through my comments to write articles about?
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5671337>

Probably just a coincidence but feels a bit weird.

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beothorn
In 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'.

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antonios
"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!

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spudlyo
The Basque (a language isolate) word for mother is 'ama'.

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alok-g
It's probably the other way around. Babies learn their first sounds, and
languages, as they develop, assign those words to the moms and dads.

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bbayer
Interesting read. In Turkish 'mama' = baby food and also 'meme' = breasts.
Also it looks like there is connection to word 'mammal'

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anuraj
In my language Malayalam, mother is 'Amma'. Maman or more correctly 'Ammavan'
is uncle.

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brisance
Mama in Mandarin Chinese literally means mother.

~~~
gurkendoktor
I 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
Apparently it is not a Western loanword -
<http://wold.livingsources.org/word/77161647552647739>

