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Comment by dsrguru | Hacker News Reader

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...

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Eeeh, either you cited the wrong article, or I'm very confused. That paper, and what's written in your comment, actually supports what the original article says. It's the same thesis, actually. The paper that you link to is even written by R. Jacobson, the author of the book that's cited in the article; it supports the article's position and addresses your specific objections. So it's a highly contested theory, but you cite a paper supporting it?

What that paper does argue is against "in the beginning, there was one language" theories, which is not the same thing at all.

Granted, the original submission goes a bit overboard. It's not "nearly every language", it's about 55% of all languages for "mama" as mother, and 55% for "papa"/"baba" as father, there's a lot of mixing m/p/b (the labial consonants) and so on. But both you, and the paper you link to, are supporting that position, essentially.

Pertinet excerpt from linked paper:

"8. Conclusion.

As the evidence shows clearly, the mama/papa words are created by parents who are eager to believe that their children are trying to talk when in fact those children are merely producing the universal babbling noises.

Since every child babbles in much the same way, parents everywhere hear the same noises, and they almost always choose to assign the same meanings to the childish noises they hear.

Again and again parents create words like mama ‘mother’, and again and again these creations pass out of the nursery into adult speech, displacing other words in the process.

As a result, we find the mama/papa words in languages all over the planet, in much the same form everywhere, and we frequently find them in the process of displacing older and more formal words, which themselves may be the greatly changed remains of earlier mama/papa words."

Yup.

In the South Indian language Tulu, "ma" root word (ie., Amme) is used to refer to the father and the "pa" for mother (ie.,Appe).

Also, mama = Uncle in many Indian languages (both Dravidian and Indo-European).

In Turkish, mother is "anne" (pronounced ah-neh) and father is "baba". I don't know whether or not Turkish babies make the mama sounds or not, not having experienced them doing so.

Well, "mama" in Turkish is a nickname for breast milk. So if a foreign man in Istanbul is calling his mother "mama" all the time, expect some giggles.

In rural areas and during the pre-republican period mother is "ana", in Turkish.

"Mamu" means "Mother" for Balkanian Turks.

Mama isn't always the first "word". Some babies start with dada or papa, sometimes to the dismay of their mother who don't understand the development of language and feel rejected...

It is not surprising that some culture developed it the other way around.

I watched my brother grow up and his first word was "give me". Well, to be pedantic it was "dai", which means "give me". Given that it's a simple single syllable, it's somewhat in line with the article...

Edit: before you ask, yes he did know exactly what it meant. He'd point at things and say "dai", fully expecting you to bring it to him.

before you ask, yes he did know exactly what it meant. He'd point at things and say "dai", fully expecting you to bring it to him.

I think you may well be reading too much in to it. Reaching for things and uttering out of frustration if they're out of reach comes long before any useful linguistic understanding.

Do you remember how old he was? As someone with several younger siblings and newborn foster siblings, I'd guess that it was a cute coincidence (as many "first words" are).

2 or 3. It's an interesting philosophic argument though - if he knew that pointing at things and saying that word led to others almost always giving him what he asked for, does that mean he knew the meaning of the word, or is he just aware of its effect? Is saying "mama" and expecting mom to come any different, given that it's not an actual full imperative sentence?

First word at age 2 or 3 years old? Can't be. With a 3-year-old you can talk using short sentences, and typically they know about 100-200 words, sometimes more. The first word like "mama" "baba" "tata" usually comes out at age <12 months.

Both our kids produced 'dada' before 'mama' - seems quite common.

Finnish = äiti

Hungarian = anya

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

Telugu = తల్లి (talli)

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.

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.

Talli is to mother as Amma is to the mama word from the article. Interestingly, 'mama' in Telugu is uncle.

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

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

Mama also means mother in Hungarian though. Nagymama (nagy means big) is grandmother.

Interestingly enough, "äiti" is actually a (very old) loanword of Germanic origin. The original Finnish word for "mother" is "emä" or "emo", deriving from the Proto-Uralic "*ämä". "Emä" and "emo" are still in use in poetry and in some compound words in a figurative sense, for instance "emolevy" (motherboard) and "emäalus" (mothership).

In modern Finnish, "mamma" is one of the words used colloquially to refer to one's grandmother (cf. "granny"). In some dialects, it can also mean simply "mother". These usages are probably loaned from Swedish where the formal words for mother and father are "mamma" and "pappa" respectively.

North Sámi = eadni

Way better read than the OP. You seem to be pretty well-versed in the field. What readings would you recommend to someone interested in historical linguistics?

I don't see where you disagree with the article. From what I understood, the article is suggesting that the reason we all have mama, papa or similar words in our languages is their relatively easy prononciation coupled with the baby's needs. Where is it saying that mama definitely means mother?

Tagalog:

formal: nanay (mom), tatay (dad) or just nay or tay for short

informal: Ina (Mother), Ama (Father)

It's interesting that even the formal words are simple enough for a baby to pronounce.

FWIW, "mama" means something entirely different (formal, uncommon term for gentleman).

And in Maori Papa is the Earth Mother.

Bulgarian: mama, tati

Polish: mama, tata (of course not in formal contexts).

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