
Why ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ Sound So Similar in So Many Languages - nols
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/words-mom-dad-similar-languages/409810/?single_page=true
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myVocatio
In India where there are dozens of languages, this plays out interestingly...
Granted, in few indian languages 'M' sound is not there.. but it uses even
more basic sound 'aa'(as in used by babies earlier than 'm' sound) e.g. Aai in
Marathi etc - or a similar Baa in Gujrati..

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Manishearth
There's a joke in a Marathi children's book, which goes roughly as follows:

A: Know why we call our mothers "Aai"?

B: No, why?

A: The reason is because "aaaaa" is the sound you make when hurt or in
trouble, and it's your first instinct to call to your mother for help in such
cases.

B: Nonsense. Do English-speakers^ say "maaaaaaaa" when hurt?

I think Indic languages have almost every permutation of "a" and "m" for
"mother" \-- we have "Aai", "amma", "maaa", "mamma", ...

^Might have been Hindi speakers, I forget now.

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captainmuon
I think its not just a matter of naming the closest person with the easiest
sound, and the second closest person with the second easiest one. You know how
parents say they can tell by the cries of their baby what the baby needs?
After the birth of our kid I found there is actually some truth to it. When he
was hungry, he smacked his lips (like when sucking) and it made a mamamama
sound, or myammyammyam or maybe even nomnomnom (overlaying the crying). When
he had pain, it sounded more like auääää (excuse the umlaut) or auayyyy, due
to the way he suddenly opened his mouth. I can imagine this is the source of
expletives like Ouch or Aua in many languages. Now that he is a bit older (~10
months) he has more control over the sounds he makes, and is experimenting
with speech, but the mamama and auäää seems to stick. Funnily, he seems to say
"daddy" to me, although thats not the word in this region of the world (that
would be papa) and I don't know where he got it from. Also, its too early to
tell if he is consciously using it for me or just experimenting with
interesting sounds. I guess parents tend to overinterpret the first utterances
of their kids a lot :-)

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filoeleven
> You know how parents say they can tell by the cries of their baby what the
> baby needs? After the birth of our kid I found there is actually some truth
> to it.

In fact there are five or more "words" that newborns have that can tell you
what they need. A friend showed me a video from Oprah discussing it. Below is
the first link I found describing them. Her newborn nearly always calmed down
immediately when she responded to him based on what she heard. I was surprised
I'd never heard of these before and that they don't appear to be well-known
among new parents.

[http://www.whattoexpect.com/blogs/motherhoodinthemountains/n...](http://www.whattoexpect.com/blogs/motherhoodinthemountains/newborn-
cries-the-five-cries-you-need-to-know)

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sundarurfriend
The author, John McWhorter, is a great guy to listen to. His TED talk[1] is
interesting, his TED-Ed lessons[2] are even more interesting, and his "Story
of Human Language"[3] course is so enormously interesting and fun, I listen to
it as entertainment when bored.

[1]
[https://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_la...](https://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ted+ed+john+mcw...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ted+ed+john+mcwhorter)

[3] [http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/story-of-human-
langua...](http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/story-of-human-
language.html)

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imron
And then in Finnish it's äiti.

~~~
iagooar
Basque, which is one of the oldest, European languages with no direct
relationship to any other modern language, uses "ama" for saying mom, and
"aita" for saying dad (both putting the stress on the second "a").

~~~
ocean3
Kannada language has something simialr - amma(mom) and appa(dad).

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jonnathanson
I guess I'll be the geek who brings Tolkien into this, but for the curious:
even the Elvish word for mom is basically a phonetic equivalent to "mommy."
(I'll leave it to someone more enterprising to give us the Klingon word.)

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Thorondor
It's SoS in Klingon.

I wonder what this tells us about Klingon physiology? After reading the
article, the words for 'mother' and 'father' actually seem like interesting
pieces of information to learn about any newly discovered race of aliens.

~~~
eru
And whether they even have the concepts.

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princeb
japanese falls completely outside this generalization. edit: on further
investigation mama and baba are used very informally but it appears these are
loanwords.

~~~
euske
Traditionally, they were "o-toh" for dad and "o-kah" for mom. You might add
"-chan" or "-san" or remove the "o-" prefix, depending on your taste.

Personally, a phrase like "every language" immediately flags a BS sign to me.

~~~
ss248
Kids use okasan/otosan only when they are talking about third party mom/dad.
They use haha (which make even more sense, according to article) or chichi
when speaking about their own mom and dad.

~~~
princeb
haha and chichi are more formal.

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westiseast
It's a nice article, but isn't this something every parent realizes after
their first kid? 'Aaaah' sounds come first, then maybe an 'oh' and then the
lips come in to make 'mamama' or 'bababab' and then it takes a longer time for
complex words involving the tongue or non-aspirated sounds to come in (like
'teh' or 'keh').

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gweinberg
Everyone with a brain the size a walnut already knows this:
[http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1581](http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1581)

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gggggggg
I am in Australia, and we say 'Mum' not 'Mom'. Does anyone know why?

I have always found Mom weird.

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hugh4
Just one of many pronunciation drifts that occurred between the UK and its
American colonies at some point between 1620 and 1788. Largely it seems the
Americans kept the old pronunciations while the mother country changed theirs,
which is why the English of Shakespeare's time sounds a bit American.

~~~
panglott
This claim is generally made less about Standard American or General American
and more about regional Appalachian dialects. Even this is a myth.
[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002699.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002699.html)
[http://lrc.ohio.edu/lrcmedia/Streaming/lingCALL/ling270/myth...](http://lrc.ohio.edu/lrcmedia/Streaming/lingCALL/ling270/myth9.pdf)

English and American dialects both originated in (Shakespearean) Early Modern
English, but both have changed over time, as languages do.

~~~
hugh4
To my ears an Appalachian accent doesn't sound that different to a regular
American accent, it's just an exaggerated version of it.

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sgustard
In Korean "mam-ma" means food.

~~~
enraged_camel
Very similar in Turkish! Minor difference: "mama".

Mother is "ana" (traditional) or "anne" (contemporary).

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utku_karatas2
You'd be surprised how similar Turkish and Korean actually is. Both coming
from Altaic language group the grammatical structure is very similar. It blew
my mind when I first learned about that. Take a look at this...

    
    
      yap-mak == ka-da 
      yap-ma == ka-jima 
      yap-ma-yin == ka-jima-yo
    

They even have the same kinship rules as us (Abi, Abla, etc.). The more I'm
digging in Korean culture the more similarities I'm finding during my short
stay here.

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xacaxulu
Mater Pater

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avodonosov
Imho it's an obvious thing. Strange that it takes so song article

