Mama and papa

For the American vocal group of the 1960s, see The Mamas & the Papas.

In linguistics, mama and papa refers to the sequences of sounds /ma/, /mama/ and similar ones known to correspond to the word for "mother" and "father" in many languages of the world.

The basic kinship terms mama and papa are said to comprise a special case of false cognates. The cross-linguistic similarities between these terms are thought to result from the nature of language acquisition.^[1] These words are the first word-like sounds made by babbling babies, and parents tend to associate the first sound babies make with themselves. Thus, there is no need to ascribe the similarities to common ancestry of !Kung ba, Aramaic abba, Mandarin Chinese bàba, Persian baba, and French papa (all "father") ; or Navajo amá, Mandarin Chinese māma, Swahili mama, Quechua mama, and English "mama" (all "mother").

These terms are built up from speech sounds that are easiest to produce (bilabials like m, p, and b and the open vowel a). However, variants do occur; for example, in Fijian, the word for "mother" is nana, in Altaic and Turkish we have ana, and in proto-Old Japanese, the word for "mother" was *papa. The modern Japanese word for "father," chichi, is from older titi. In Japanese the child's initial mamma is interpreted to mean "food".^[2]

In the Proto-Indo-European language *mater meant "mother" and *pater meant "father", *appa- meant "papa", i.e. a nursery word for "father".

European language examples

'Mother' in different languages:

• Catalan mamà / mama
• Portuguese mãe / mamãe / mamã
• French maman
• Italian mamma
• Polish mama
• Romanian mama / mamă
• Spanish mamá
• Swedish mamma
• Norwegian mamma
• English mama / momma / mam/mum/mom,
• Dutch mama
• German Mama
• Russian мама (mama)
• Greek μαμά (mama)
• Tamil அம்மா (ammā)
• In Hungarian, which is a Uralic language unrelated to the Indo-European languages, apa means "father" and anya means mother.

which tend to use open vowels such as [ɑ] and [ɐ].

In Russian papa, deda and baba mean "father", "grandfather" and "grandmother" respectively, though the last two can represent baby-talk (baba is also a slang word for "woman", and a folk word for a married woman with a child born).

Caucasian languages

• Georgian is notable for having its similar words "backwards" compared to other languages: "father" in Georgian is მამა (mama) , while "mother" is pronounced as დედა (deda). "პაპა" papa stands for "grandfather".

South Asian languages

Dravidian languages like:

• Kannada,
• Tamil,
• Malayalam,
• Telugu and
• Tulu

all have the words amma and appa.

Though amma and appa are used in Tulu, they are not really Tulu words but used due to the influence of Kannada. The actual words for mother and father in Tulu are appe pronounced IPA: [ape] and amme pronounced IPA: [amæ]. It is probably the only language where the m and p sounds are reversed when addressing mother and father.^{[citation needed]}

Malayalam also uses acha for father. The terms papa and mama are used for baby food and breast milk respectively in this language.

In Tamil "Thaai" and "Thanthai" are original Tamil words for mother and father, Amma and Appa came in later due to external influence.

• Hindi has the word mātā as the formal word for "mother". However, due to English borrowings, the words mamma and pappa are common.
• Assamese ma and aai as "mother" and deuta and pitai as "father"

East and Central Asian languages

• Mandarin Chinese, 父亲 ("fùqīn") and 母亲 ("mǔqīn") for "father" and "mother" respectively. However, parents are usually referred to by their children as 爸爸 (bàba) and 妈妈 (māma) -- "Dad" and "Mom". And sometimes in informal language, they use bà and mā for short. (Note: The f sound was pronounced bilabially (as with p or b) in older and some other forms of Chinese, thus "fu" is related to the common "father" word pa.)
• Kutenai, (a language isolate of southeastern British Columbia) Ma
• Khmer has different words that indicate different levels of respect. They include the intimate mak/meak and pa, the general mai/me and puk, and the formal madaay and ovpuk.
• Japanese, haha is the basic word for mother which does not combine with honorifics *papa (modern Japanese /h/ derives from the bilabial fricative [ɸ]) which in turn is from the older *p.) Japanese has also borrowed informal mama and papa along with the native terms.
• In Vietnamese, mẹ is mother and bố is father. Má and ba respectively in Southern Vietnamese.
• Korean, eomma [ʌmma] is mom and appa is dad.
• Thai, me3e (long e with glottalized high-low falling tone). and "father" is pho3o (with aspirated /pʰ/).
• Tagalog, an Austronesian language, mothers can be called nánay or ináy (diminutives of iná "mother"), and dads tátay (by contrast, not related to amá "father"). Owing to contact with Spanish and English, mamá, papá, ma(m(i)), and dad [dʌd] or dádi are also used.
• Uyghur, a Central Asian language, uses ana or apa for mother, and ata for father.

Almost no languages lack labial consonants, and no language lacks an open vowel like [a]. The Tagalog -na-/-ta- mom/dad words parallel the more common ma/pa in nasality/orality of the consonants and identity of place of articulation. However, there is nothing of motherhood or fatherhood inherent in the sounds.

See also

• Baby talk
• Ab (father)

References

1. ^ Jakobson, R. (1962) "Why 'mama' and 'papa'?" In Jakobson, R. Selected Writings, Vol. I: Phonological Studies, pp. 538–545. The Hague: Mouton.
2. ^ "まんま". Daijisen. Sanseido. http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/dsearch?p=%E3%81%BE%E3%82%93%E3%81%BE&stype=0&dtype=0. Retrieved 2011-06-21.