Why do many languages use "Ma" or "Pa" to represent mother and father?

Question

It just struck my mind a while ago...

Answer 1

First, Chinese and Japanese are definitely NOT Indo-European.

There is a range of forms that are common affectionate terms for mother and father, "ma", "pa", "ba", "ta", "da", "na" are all within that range. The "ta" "da" set is just as common as the "ma" "pa" set. Indeed, there are all kinds of combinations of these forms for "mother"/"father" or "father"/"mother". There isn't anything surprising here. These are the earliest sounds that any child masters in the process of learning their first language. The child looks into Mom's face and utters some meaningless sound. Mom smiles. The child repeats the meaningless sound and Mom smiles again. It's a positive reinforcement loop. OR The child looks into Mom's face and utters some meaningless sound. Mom laughs and says some different sound. The child repeats the first sound and Mom gets serious and says some different sound. Child panics and repeats Mom's sound. Mom smiles. Child is reassured and starts repeating Mom's sound to see Mom smile.

EDIT for Brennus: I read that article and it has nothing to do with "ma", "pa", etc. It also has nothing to do with the inventory of sounds in human language. It has ONLY to do with languages that use tone as an additional dimension of distinguishing one meaning from another. Indeed, the very consonants we are discussing here (labial and alveolar oral and nasal stops) are found with equal frequency in tonal as well as nontonal languages. There is a great danger whenever one of these genetic studies comes along that people overgeneralize the results and draw some great divide between languages based on very, very little genetic data that is confined to a very tiny piece of the massive linguistic puzzle. In terms of the words under discussion here, the syllables we are talking about occur in tonal as well as nontonal languages with equal frequency and equal probability. Indeed, English-speaking children of British ancestry are equally likely to produce any of these syllables as their first name for their maternal parent as Mandarin-speaking children of Chinese ancestry. English-speaking children tend to be taught that "ma" is the appropriate syllable for mother, but the appropriate syllable for father varies between "da" and "pa". In the related Gothic language, the syllable for father was probably taught as "ta" (the Gothic word for 'father' is 'atta'). English-speaking children also produce "na" for mother, but they are then taught to associate that syllable with a secondary female care giver, either "grandmother" (nana) or "nanny". So don't let very controversial, and not-yet-confirmed, genetic evidence for another linguistic feature expand beyond the very proscribed bounds of the genetic study. The genetic study is irrelevant for the question at hand. Language is NOT hard-wired into the brain or else Mandarin speakers and children of Chinese ancestry could NEVER learn English. This is patently false.

Second, the point of the article itself is quite controversial and not well accepted by linguists. There are serious problems with the issue since the article seems to imply that the "nontonal" gene evolved later and, therefore, nontonal languages are more recent in origin. Nothing could be further from the linguistic facts as we know them. Indeed, linguistic reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan seems to indicate that all these classic tonal languages evolved tone AFTER the point in time when they were just dialects of a single Proto-Sino-Tibetan language. So the whole issue of tonal languages representing an older genetic situation is the opposite of the actual linguistic situation. Indeed, one finds "tonal" languages in every part of the world except Australia. Australian languages became separated from other human populations about 40,000 years ago, so any recent genetic variation would not show up in those populations. Since the "tonal" genes are supposed to be the older combination, you would expect the Australian languages to be completely tonal. Yet, that is the part of the world where you don't find ANY tone. The researchers in the article only used a data base of 30-something languages. There are over 6000 languages in the world. I can easily say that their database has no statistical foundation in linguistic fact. Indeed, they probably used the first 30 grammars they found on the shelves of their local library (a typical non-linguistically valid "database of languages") which means that even though Europe accounts for only about 1% of the world's languages, it accounts for up to 75% of the grammars on the shelves of a typical language library. And even if they tried to balance the database, 30 languages cannot possibly sample the global linguistic diversity of 6000 languages.

EVEN LATER EDIT: I want to write just a little more about the "genetic" issue. Language ABILITY is genetic. This is noncontroversial since no other creature on the planet has the ability to master human language (chimps, gorillas and bonobos have never progressed beyond the level of a 3-year-old human in sign language tests). The wrong assumption to make about this is that specific language STRUCTURES are genetic. The problem with the genetics versus tone study is that people all over the world can learn either tonal or nontonal systems and we find these systems all over the world, not just in the region identified by the researchers as the region of "tonal" genes. Linking their genetic discovery to a language ability might be valid, but linking their study to a language structure was very unwise.

Answer 2

I think that all previous five people have given good, maybe excellent answers in their own way.

However, there is some evidence that these sounds for "mother" and "father" may have a genetic basis in humanity going back to the earliest origins of language (c. 150,000 to 170,000 years ago).

In fact, two linguists in Scotland have already published a study linking tonal languages to genes:

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9254026

If this is so, it would pretty much rule out any cultural or environmental explanations for why people around the world use words like mama, papa, dad, tata etc. for mother and father.

More research needs to be done for sure. However, it probably will be done and will result in some very different opinions on the subject fifty or sixty years from now.

Update:

Taivo,

Thank you for your response.

--- Brennus

Update

There are several articles on the internet, primarily from "New Scientist," that carry a hint that mama / papa words are very ancient - spoken by Neanderthal babies too - and may be programmed (or hard-wired in the human brain). This in turn, implies something genetic going on if it is true.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6188

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/22/1090464801953.html?from=moreStories

Answer 3

You're asking "why", not "what languages", right?

That's baby-talk. The different languages have taken the first sounds babies make and have applied them to the parents who are the closest persons to a baby.

Many languages use ma' and pa', but other sounds are used in the different languages.
.

Answer 4

OK, how many languages are there? Are you counting dialects? unofficial languages? created languages?

I'm not sure there is a number, but almost every language descended from ancient Indo-European uses the basic forms that come from the same words as Mother/Mama and Father/Papa. It is one of the first example used in Latin/linguistics/language history course.

The languages that don't descend from Indo-European include Hebrew, Hungarian, Finnish, Euskadi and most of the Native Americans. I'm pretty sure Chinese and Japanese even fall under the category of Indo-European.

Answer 5

now for Chinese and Japnese and Korean are not Indo-European...for Chinese they are family with Sino-Tibetan languages and for Viet Nam,Cambodia,Laos,Thailand,Burma are under Austro-Asiatic family...also we don't used Ma or Pa

Má,Mẹ,Ý,Vú... all of these are Mom

Ba,Cha,Tía... this for Father (Ba sometimes can be number 3)

Answer 6

French: Maman & Papa
Italian & Spanish: Mama & Papa

maybe Portuguese as well im not sure but id bet on it.

It's just short form for the same word in all these languages.