Eli5 why the words for mom and dad are so similar in a wide variety of languages
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All of the languages in the world are kind of like the farthest branches on a tree. They branch out from earlier versions of a previous language, and all of them can be traced back to a small subset of original languages that make up the trunk.
It’s basically because babies have an easier time saying certain sounds like ma, pa, da which then become words like mama, dada, papa which turn into for example Swedish mamma, French papa and English daddy
Two reasons –
1. Both Mom and Dad are examples of sounds that really easy for babies to say, they come from a core set of sounds that the human mouth is able to process first. Along with the babbling / repetition of Momma and Dada. That’s just a core human habit irrespective of culture.
2. The majority of languages from Europe to India are theorized as having developed from a single, prehistoric mother language we now call “Proto-Indo-European”, or PIE for short. The idea is about 5,000 years ago the language spread out among the nomadic tribes of early human civilization. People settled down and the languages started to evolve from there into Celtic, or Greek, or Latin, or Germanic and even Sanskrit languages. For this reason we can trace lots of common words back through seeming unrelated languages to a core sound or core structure. Mom and Dad are classic examples that are still pretty universal among all the PIE descended languages.
For concrete examples of PIE and modern english, see [this chart](https://external-preview.redd.it/BhNby4GS9v4mL1lbOp2v_Uy1IkDBunT-H4lDWZThVkM.png?auto=webp&s=f2ce534fdc4ca4841a000de8603e9bfa87bf9689)
The same PIE root-sound “hreg” meaning “to straighten” or “right” moves throughout all the Indo-European languages back to modern english giving us words like Regal, Right, King, Rank, Reich, Rail, and Regime.
I’ve heard that “mama” is similar to the sounds of a baby suckling, which may be an associative title
The sounds are created using the lips only so babies can see how to make the sound. The Repetition is to reinforce that the sound was not random babble.
i’ll add on to the other great explanations about the sounds “ma,” “da,” “pa” being easy to say and some of the first sounds made involving forming the lips vs crying or making guttural sounds. the parents would *respond* to pretty well all sounds the baby makes.
the sounds “ma,” “ba,” “pa” are called bilabial consonants. “bilabial:” both lips. you can basically puff air through your lips and make one of these sounds. the open vowel /a/ is the simplest vowel sound to make. (i’m using “vowel” sound as i can’t remember all my linguistics 101 terms from years ago.) you just open your mouth and your vocal chords naturally vibrate that sound, vs “e” or “o” which involve some tightening and positioning of cheek, lip, vocal chord or tongue muscles.
if you notice, “mama” is a slightly simpler sound to form. “papa” has a slightly harder mouth form needed to make the sound and so does “baba.”
it would make sense that parents over millenia would consistently identify with the first sounds a baby makes as being something the parent would self-refer as and start reflecting that back to the baby. baby makes “ma ma ma ma” sounds. mom goes to baby and attends to its needs, having noting the repetitive use and says something like, “yes! mama!” when the behavior is repeated and it’s then reinforced as a name.
it’s impossible to say how far back in our lineage these identifiers would go. but it makes sense that any ancestor with the oral and throat structures to form those sounds would start making those associations.
chimps and gorillas have been taught to use sign language, demonstrating that they have a capacity for language but not the physiology to speak. the debate about vocalizations of other primates and whether they are using an oral language is becoming very interesting and something fun to explore.
again, not an expert, so not claiming this is absolutely correct. just enthusiastic and curious about these things.
We make the M sound when we’re suckling at the tit.
It’s one of the earliest associations.
The M sound is way more common for mums, than D is for dads
If anyone’s interested – The word “pineapple” is interesting. In major languages other than English, this fruit is called “ananas”, or something very similar to this word.
The more common a word is in a language, the more resistant it is to change. Repetition breeds a degree of conformity. Hence, even as languages differentiate in grammar and vocabulary, the more common words of each language branch will tend to maintain similar forms. So *papa* is commonly understood in most Romance languages, for instance, not to mention Germanic languages. It explains similarity between language families.
Papa and mama are special cases that appear to transcend language families because of how young children develop language. Names for parents tend to be among the early sounds children make, hence “dada,” “baba,” “papa,” or “tata.” So there are a limited set of possibilities that could form to identify parents, among the first words used by babies. This [article from The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/words-mom-dad-similar-languages/409810/) by linguist John McWhorter breaks down the linguistics in an accessible way.
Most language parents teach their babies but babies taught parents their names. Ma, ba, da, and pa sounds some of the first phonemes a baby can make. As they use these sounds randomly parents respond to them trying to figure out what they are trying to say. Babies realize their parents respond to these sounds and use the sounds more often to get their attention. This is pretty universal so everyone around the world is used to their babies calling them by these sounds so they adapted words that share these sounds as words for mom and dad
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