Re: Common words for man & husband, woman & wife

On Sun, 07 May 2006 15:56:28 -0400, R A Brown <ray@...>
wrote:

>> You don't know when the earliest usage of Mum/Mam/Mom or Dad was, do
>> you?
>
> 'fraid not - tho I think one can be certain it was being used for quite
> a time before it ever got recorded in writing.
The fact that the ma / da pattern is found in every documented language
family on the planet[*] is surely testament to that.

[*]Interestingly, in Georgian (IIRC, but I can't speak for the entire set
of languages in the Caucasus), it's da for mother and ma for father.





Paul

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