In linguistics, mama and papa are considered a special case of false cognates. In many languages of the world, sequences of sounds similar to and mean "mother" and "father", usually but not always in that order. This is thought to be a coincidence resulting from the process of early language acquisition.

Etymology

'Mama' and 'papa' use speech sounds that are among the easiest to produce: bilabial consonants like, , and , and the open vowel. They are, therefore, often among the first word-like sounds made by babbling babies (babble words), and parents tend to associate the first sound babies make with themselves and to employ them subsequently as part of their baby-talk lexicon. Thus, there is no need to ascribe to common ancestry the similarities of !Kung ba, Aramaic abba, Mandarin Chinese bàba, Yoruba bàbá, and Persian baba (all "father"); or Navajo amá, Mandarin Chinese māma, Swahili mama, Quechua mama, and Polish mama (all "mother"). For the same reason, some scientists believe that 'mama' and 'papa' were among the first words that humans spoke. Linguist Roman Jakobson hypothesized that the nasal sound in "mama" comes from the nasal murmur that babies produce when breastfeeding: "Often the sucking activities of a child are accompanied by a slight nasal murmur, the only phonation which can be produced when the lips are pressed to mother’s breast or to the feeding bottle and the mouth full. Later, this phonatory reaction to nursing is reproduced as an anticipatory signal at the mere sight of food and finally as a manifestation of a desire to eat, or more generally, as an expression of discontent and impatient longing for missing food or absent nurser, and any ungranted wish. When the mouth is free from nutrition, the nasal murmur may be supplied with an oral, particularly labial release; it may also obtain an optional vocalic support." "The baby, with no particular thought, is babbling his 'mamma, mamma', and the adults are interpreting it their own way. Some imagine he calls 'mother', others believe he addresses his father, and yet others thinks he calls no one, but is simply hungry, wants to eat. They are all equally correct, and are all just as equally mistaken."

Variants

Variants using other sounds do occur: for example, in Fijian, the word for "mother" is nana, in Turkish, the word for mother is ana, and in Old Japanese, the word for "mother" was papa. The modern Japanese word for "father", chichi, is from older titi (but papa is more common colloquially in modern Japanese). Very few languages lack labial consonants (this mostly being attested on a family basis, in the Iroquoian and some of the Athabaskan languages), and only Arapaho is known to lack an open vowel /a/. The Tagalog -na- / -ta- ("mom" / "dad" words) parallel the more common ma / pa in nasality / orality of the consonants and identity of place of articulation.

Examples by language family

"Mama" and "papa" in different languages:

Afro-Asiatic languages

Austroasiatic languages

Austronesian languages

Dravidian languages

Uralic languages

Indo-European languages

In the Proto-Indo-European language, *mā́tēr (modern reconstruction: *méh₂tēr) meant "mother" while *pǝtḗr (modern reconstruction: *ph₂tḗr) and átta meant "father".

Romance

Balto-Slavic

Germanic

Celtic

Indo-Aryan

Old Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit): Mātṛ / Ambā for "mother" and Pitṛ / Tātaḥ for "father".

Other Indo-European languages

Kartvelian languages

Mayan languages

Niger-Congo languages

Sino-Tibetan languages

Kra–Dai languages

Turkic languages

Other families and language isolates