Learn English – Origins of the word “mother”

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Apologies in advance for this question being only indirectly related to the English language, but I find it fascinating.

I note with interest that the English words "mother" and "mama" have similar sounding equivalents in almost all languages, even those that appear to have no historical recent relationship.

http://www.mothersdaycelebration.com/mother-in-different-languages.html

Not even mentioned in that link is the Mandarin word "māmā", a language I always assumed had no relationship with English whatsoever.

This suggests to me that "mother" / "mama" could be one of the oldest surviving words, belonging to some lost parent language from which most modern languages derive.

My questions are:

  1. Is this theory remotely plausible, or just fanciful thinking on my part?
  2. Are there any other "universal" words like this? (Could "OK" be considered such?)

Best Answer

According to wiktionary:

From Middle English moder, from Old English mōdor, from Proto-Germanic *mōdēr (cf. East Frisian muur, Dutch moeder, German Mutter), from Proto-Indo-European *méh₂tēr (cf. Irish máthair, Tocharian A mācar, B mācer, Lithuanian mótė).

That's abosultely right. Proto-Indo-European is the hypothetical ancestor language or protolanguage of most European and Indian languages.

That's why in many languages of the same origin the word "Mother" is used with trivial variations. I'm don't have a listing of the words you're looking for.

Note that some words might have been used in other languages because of reasons other than language origins. For example many Arabic words are used by Muslims in middle east in countries like Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, etc. Or some other words like okay are gaining popularity in different languages and get used by many people. But as RegDwight mentions for the word okay this is a case of borrowing a word.

The word Mama or Papa are one of the easiest words that can be produced or repeated or by babies. Maybe that's one of other reasons which has made the words being used in most of the languages around the world.

To get more information about Proto-Indo-European language visit here.

To get more information about the list of Proto-Indo-European languages visit here.