Re: Common words for man & husband, woman & wife (was: Brothers-in-law)

staving Yahya Abdal-Aziz:

>And BritE "Mum", as well as, AFAIK, USE "Mom", also
>derive from "Ma'am".  As the better-behaved  children
>of earlier times called their father "Sir", so too did
>they call their mother "Ma'am".
>
>But where did "Dad" come from?  It certainly seems
>a bit remote from "father" / "pater" &c.
[d&d&] is one of the first things most children say. [m&m&] occurs slightly
later. They have naturally become associated with titles of parents (Notice
how many languages have words for "mother" beginning with m - and unrelated
languages at that). As for why the association is usually [d&d&] with the
father and [m&m&] with the mother, my guess is that before they associate
meanings with the words, [d&d&] is what babies say when they're happy, and
[m&m&] is what they say when they need comforting - and typical cultural
roles of parents are that daddies do treats and mummies do comforting. In
Gerogian, however, someone once mentioned on the list that "dada" means
"mummy" and "mama" means "daddy".

None of this explains the Japanese familiar terms for parents, "chichi"
(daddy, my father), and "haha" (mummy, my mother). Even more confusingly,
"chichi" can also be a slang term for female breasts!

I have a seventeen-month old son, who's teaching me a lot about
first-language acquisition at the moment.

Pete

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