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

On 5/8/06, Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...> wrote:
> 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!
Well, AFAIK Japanese /h/ comes from earlier /p/ (via /p\/, I think),
so that gives *"papa" for "mother" -- a bilabial stop, again, though a
plosive rather than a nasal. Still, closer to the "universal" "mama"
than the modern pronunciation "haha" is.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>