Why “mama” sounds the same almost everywhere
Mandarin, Swahili, Persian and Spanish are unrelated, yet children everywhere call their mother something like “mama”. In Georgian, though, “mama” means father.
Mandarin māma, Swahili mama, Persian mâmân, Spanish mamá, Polish mama. These languages are not closely related, and some are not related at all. So why do they agree?
The babbling explanation
Babies start with the easiest sounds: an open mouth (a) and lips coming together (m, p, b). Around six months, babbling produces “ma-ma-ma”, and soon after “pa-pa”, “ba-ba” and “da-da”.
The babies are probably just playing with sound. But parents hear their names. Since mothers have usually been the main early caregivers, the earliest syllable, typically ma, gets attached to them, and the next ones to the father. The linguist Larry Trask made this argument; parents, he suggested, are keen to hear what they want to hear.
The linguist Roman Jakobson added a physical detail: the soft nasal hum babies make while feeding, with lips pressed together, sounds like mmm.
The exceptions prove the rule
- Georgian: mama means father, and deda means mother.
- Turkish: ana for mother, baba for father.
- Old Japanese used papa for mother.
If the words were inherited, these reversals would be hard to explain. If they come from babbling that adults then interpret, they are exactly what you’d expect: the sounds are universal, but which parent gets which sound is up to each culture.
Bring it up
“In Georgian, ‘mama’ means father. And the reason ‘mama’ is nearly universal isn’t what most people guess.”
Follow the thread
- RelatedThe Kazakh bride who renames her husband’s family What people call their relatives says a lot about a culture’s family structure.
- RelatedKazakh names that tell a story What a child is called is never just a label; it reflects a family’s hopes and its language.
- RelatedMany languages have two words for “we” Two features of language that look universal, until you check across many languages.
- Same patternOnce you notice something, it’s everywhere Parents hear meaning in their baby’s babble, just as we notice patterns once we expect them.
- In contrastTea if by sea, chai if by land Mama is similar everywhere by coincidence of babbling; tea is similar everywhere because it was borrowed.