February 2001 Archives

This is also one of those things that go back several years, but it came up again recently. And the interesting thing was one of my friends told me that I can probably get a grant to do a research on this subject...

I don't know if I've mentioned before, but one of the things that I really enjoy learning is foreign languages (it's one of those things-that-are-different-from-my-own categories). And one of the surprising things that I've come across from early on is that a lot of the languages (or cultures) have similar sounds for "mother" or "father" in informal forms.

For example, "mom"/"mama" is "umma" in Korean and Hindi. And "dad"/"papa" is "abba" in Korean. Of course, I didn't do an extensive study on the subject, but it seems the phoneme "m" is associated with "mother" in most languages and the phoneme "bb", "p" or "d" with "father". Does this mean all humans somehow share a prehistoric "knowledge" contained in the genes? Or does it mean that we all had a common language?

I don't know the answers to those questions, but I don't think we have to go that extreme to come up with a simple one. I call it "the theory of eager parents".

I don't know if anyone else has noticed (I am sure you did), but the first articulate "sound" or "consonant" that a baby makes is usually "m" sound. It's because that's probably the most simple phoneme to reproduce: you try to blow air out while the lips closed. And when you part the lips, the sound becomes "ma".

So a baby innocently makes a noise, and who's most likely to be there to hear it? Its mother, of course! And you already know how proud parents can get about their child (I think it's quite true that most parents think their children to be the smartest). And what does this "eager" mother think? She, along with all other family members who were present, think the baby was calling out to her.

Besides the "m" phoneme, the next easiest sound you can make are "p" or "bb" (stronger "b") and "d" (the "d" phoneme is a bit more difficult, I think, because you need some control of your tongue). And when the baby finally (or accidentally) makes that noise, who else is most likely to be there? Of course, its father. And the "eager" parents will gladly accept, without any doubt, that the baby was calling out for its papa. Even if the father wasn't present at that moment, a very happy mother will inform the father, as soon as possible, that the baby called out for him (if it isn't "ma", who else?).

And another thing I would like to mention is that after that, there is a reverse feedback to the baby to associate "ma" with its mother and "pa"/"da" with its father. And this completes the description of the origination of words for mother and father. :)

So do all of human languages come from a "root" one? I don't know. However, I can quite confidently say that regardless of the ethnicities and the cultures, all parents are "eagerly" expecting their babies be smart (so that they will have a better chance of surviving the world).