Why ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ Sound So Similar in So Many Languages: Linguistic Coincidence?

The Atlantic ^ | 10/16/2015 | JOHN MCWHORTER

[demshateGod]

Oh the mammaries of my childhood.

[struggle]

Not to nitpick, but mother is “okaasan.”
“Obaasan” is grandmother.

[Verginius Rufus]

Dogs must have been very cheap in Tsarist Russia. For one ruble you could get 100 kopeks.

[Verginius Rufus]

Ma means "mother" in Mandarin Chinese. Ma also means "horse." Fortunately they have different ideograms so they don't get confused. (Plus they have different tones.)

"Ma" meaning "horse" may be an Indo-European loanword, cognate with English "mare."

[DouglasKC]

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that “mama” is similar in many languages. Picture what a baby’s mouth does when nursing. It’s not much of a stretch to see how the infant would vocalize “ma-ma” when it wants to nurse. In fact, the word in Spanish for “nurse” is mamar.

Good observation...do the same thing with "papa"...the opposite...going off the nipple...and what could cause that? Papa comes into the room!

[reg45]

Contrary to the delusions of the gender theorists, mothers and fathers are the most fundamental of human concepts.

[SeekAndFind]

MA ( AS IN MOTHER ) IN CHINESE:


MA ( AS IN HORSE ) IN CHINESE:


Notice the right radical in the ideograms for Mother and Horse. They are similar. The only difference is the Left radical of "mother" in Chinese, which is the symbol for Woman.



Shhhh... Don;t let the gender neutral types know this in the USA, they might mis-educate Chinese foreign students who will go home and demand gender neutral idiograms :)

[reg45]

Is that “ummi” as in “yummi”?

[chajin]

Not to nitpick, but mother is “okaasan.” “Obaasan” is grandmother.

That's what I get for typing in between work :-( gomen-nasai, struggle-san

[chajin]

Interesting; the Japanese kanji for "mother" is 母 , which is supposed to be a stylized rendition of breasts with nipples, as if the woman were lying down on her side (to nurse?).

[USMCPOP]

Mother in Thai is Maa. Father is Paw. Both pronounced with a falling tone.

Ma (with an up tone) = Horse. Ma (with an down tone) = Dog.

[alexander_busek]

In fact, the word in Spanish for “nurse” is mamar.

And in German: Amme (not etymologically related to the Latin "mamma" = "breast").

Regards,

[SeekAndFind]

RE: Interesting; the Japanese kanji for "mother" is 母 ,

They actually took that Kanji from the Chinese.

That's another Chinese character for mother.

[chajin]

That's another Chinese character for mother.

I guessed that :-) I'd studied hanzi only to the extent that it informs kanji, so I'm always surprised when a given Chinese hanzi isn't in some form the one used for the same meaning in Japan, and until your message I didn't know that the combination of woman/horse meant "mother." Thanks

[struggle]

普通には細かいことを気にしない。 I usually don't pay attention to the details.

[I want the USA back]

What? you mean the gender-binary is present in all languages in the world except in American colleges? You mean that people throughout the world refer to a mother and a father and they have since the beginning of language? You mean they don’t have 55 different words to describe the entire gender continuum?

[Verginius Rufus]

It doesn’t take much imagination to see the ideogram for Horse as having originally been a drawing of a horse. In the simplified version of the ideogram adopted by Red China, the resemblance is lost.

[SeekAndFind]

[cloudmountain]

Is that “ummi” as in “yummi”?

Lol. Good one.
It's ummi as in "ooomi."

"Ooom" is mother but children always say: "my mother," the 'i" as is eeee, is possessive for "my."

[Graybeard58]

Well, the first babble that came out from my daughter’s mouth was Da-Da.

*********************************************************************

The first whole sentence to come out of my oldest son’s mouth was, “Mom, I love dad”. This was while she was holding him.

His first word was da-da also.