Why is mama the same in every language

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

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. A difference in frequency of ma-sounds from other babies? 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.

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.

As an aside being deprived of language does occur to a very small number of children which does present some observational data. Chomsky talks about this in one of his recent lectures. SeanLuke on May 13, parent prev next [—]. I had come here to say exactly this. This article feels very much like armchair theorizing. Is there any evidentiary suport for it?

I couldn't find much. Their story checks out. Using google translate, I can't find a single language that does not have a 'mama' or something very similar. Add: oh, and it's "panjo" in Esperanto 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.

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. Though for some reason, GT translates English "mama" into Georgian "mama", meaning 'father'. But then, one should really not use GT for linguistic research …. Most Indian languages also follow this pattern, however Marathi uses 'Aai' for mother.

The "pure" Tamil word for mother is "thaai". There's no relation between the two languages, however. That's interesting, I never knew that And 'papa' is a synonym of grandfather in eastern Georgia e.

Regarding the first "word" a nonsense actually - it is usually "Aghu". Even before a baby starts talking anything, parents encourage them - "Say aghuu, aghuu" :. Is it just Georgian or the entire Kartvelian language family? 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.

MarkSweep on May 12, parent next [—]. In Japanese you use "haha" and "chichi" to refer to your own mother and father respectively , instead of the more formal "okaasan" and "otousan". In spoken croatian, mama is mother, tata is father. In some dialects baba is grandmother or old lady and dida deda is the grandfather. In Mandarin too - mother is 'mama', and father is 'baba'. 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. Probably not. When I was in Nepal, I noted shaking head left and right means "yes". 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. It's proposed that certain word roots might end up in different places in different languages, i. Reocurring is of course that body parts and mothers, which is common humanity, is a big part of the words examined. 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. Mz on May 12, prev next [—].

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. Progressing from this discovery, they might even start experimenting by moving their tongues about inside their mouths as they babble.

However, there are notable exceptions to this. It is used to refer to anyone worthy of respect or to whom one wishes to express submission. There are, however, quite a few interesting exceptions, proving that languages can be unpredictable, complex and above all, fun to learn.

Linguist Brian Loo Soon Hua helps answer the question. The definitive study on "mama and papa" as universal terms was conducted by Russian linguist Roman Jakobson. He explained that the easiest vocalizations for a human to make are open-mouth vowel sounds.

Babies can make vowel sounds cries from day one. And they do. As they begin to experiment with making other noises, babies will test some of the easier consonant sounds. Babies summon their energy to push out that new consonant sound "MMMM" and then relax into an open mouth vowel, usually "ah" — which is the easiest.

When you combine that with a baby's natural repetition in speech, or "babbling," you get " ma-ma", "ba-ba" "pa-pa," and so on. So why do babies gravitate to the "m" sound instead of "p" or "b"?

Because of breasts, of course! The "m" sound is the easiest for a baby mouth to make when wrapped around a warm delicious breast. Even as adults, we still associate "mmm" with something being yummy and good. So does your baby. Jakobson's work suggest that your baby has no idea your name is Mama, or Dada for that matter. Mama doesn't mean "I love you, sweet angel-woman, sacrificer of sleep, career, and buttock firmness.

So when a baby calls its father "mama," and gets increasingly disturbed when the father does not become mama, the child is not actually asking for its mother.