T
Why mama and papa?
by
Howard
Richler
Around
the globe, May and June represents the most common months that honour mothers
and fathers respectively. Surprisingly, the near universality of recognition
for parents is almost matched by the similarity that many languages have for
these two words.
In the 1950s, the American anthropologist George Murdoch studied
the words for mother and father on 470 languages scattered throughout the
planet. His analysis showed that the word for mother contained a syllable
similar to ma in 52% of cases whereas
the word for father contained this syllable in only 15% of his languages.
Conversely, the word for father has a syllable akin to pa or ta in 55% of his
language sample, while these syllables occurred in the word for mother in only
7% of cases.
What accounts for these staggering proclivities?
One theory proposed is called the “Proto-World Hypothesis” which
posits that the similarity of words in various languages for mother and
father can be explained by these words
being present in the ancestral language of mankind and that these words have simply survived on
hundreds of languages in a similar form and with the exact same meaning.
But before, we examine the veracity of this theory, let’s look
at some of parental words in various languages. Since Mother’s Day celebrations
usually precede ones for Father’s Day and we have the entrenched expression
“ladies first,” we will start with mother words. Most languages seem to have a
word for mother that is either “mama” or has a nasal sound similar to mama,
such as “nana.” Observe, Arabic ahm, Basque
ama, Dutch, moeder, Greek, mana and
Welsh, mam to name but a few.
On the paternal side of the equation we
have Albanian, Mandarin & Turkish baba,
Greek babbas, Hindi & Russian, papa, Italian, padre, Welsh, tad and Xhosa tata.
Although what I previously referred to as the Proto-World
Hypothesis sounds logical, it is wrong and doesn’t accord with scientific
evidence which was first elucidated by pioneering linguist Roman Jakobson in 1959 in his article Why “mama” and papa”? Jakobson explained that babies everywhere
acquire language in a very orderly fashion. At first the vocalizations of a
baby are done by crying or shrieking. After this, the infant moves to a cooing
stage characterized by those distinct baby noises. In this period the young
child is not making any recognizable speech sounds and is still in the
pre-speak period. But it is the next phase – the babbling stage that something
significant occurs. Here we begin to hear recognizable speech sounds in the
form of vowels and consonants. The easiest vowel sound for babies to
utter is ah because it can be made without doing
anything or with the tongue lips. And
when the baby closes her lips as is done in transforms the ah sounds into mahs
Very often these speech sound are
repeated and the mah sound turns
into mahmah.
Of course the baby isn’t really speaking, it is babbling, but is sounds like
speaking to adults and as if the baby is addressing someone who most likely is
the mother. Naturally, mom takes mama
as meaning her, and when speaking to her baby refers to herself as mama.
As anyone learning English as a
second language knows, certain consonants are very difficult to learn such as
the th sound in the beginning of
words such as the and at the end of words like south, Even a three- year old
child whose first language is English might have a problem with this sound and
their think might emerge as fink. On the other hand, some consonants
are quite easy to produce. These are the sounds that are made entirely with the
lips such as m, p, or b. These are easier
because they require no tongue work, all that is required for their production
is placing the two lips together to release them. The m sound is the easiest and this explains why mama invariably
precedes papa.
Papa is virtually
ubiquitous for a similar reason. After a baby begins making the m sound with
her lips, she is likely to make a sound that that involves slightly more than
just the putting of her lips together which involves not only the putting the
lips together, holding them in that position for a second or two and then
blowing out a puff of air. This invariably produces a p or a b sound. Another
possibility involves the a slightly more complicated procedure in which the
baby plays with their mouth a little
further back from the lips and this elicits
a t or d sound. The order
in which babies acquire these sounds explains why the second- in-command
caretaker to mama is usually called papa, baba, tata, or dada.
A happy mother’s
day and father’s day to all – even if
your first languages features words for
parental figures that diverge from this
pattern.
Richler’s latest book is Wordplay:Arranged and
Deranged Wit
