Re: Is "ma" Proto-World? (Re: Re: Comparison of philosophical languages)
| From: | Josh Roth <fuscian@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, January 22, 2003, 12:27 |
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In a message dated 1/21/03 11:29:45 PM, slimehoo@YAHOO.COM writes:
>--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Danny Wier <dawier@H...> wrote:
>
>
>> That's another word that's common in many languages for "mother". (But
>> |mama| is "father" in Georgian!) That is probably because "ma" might
>be the
>> easiest syllable to utter for an infant beginning to learn to speak.
>
>From my experience, "abba" and "adda" come before "mama". Drives my
>wife nuts when all three of the kids were going
>"dadadadadadadadadada!" long before they tried anything that sounded
>like "mama".
>
>I also have a theory that all toddlers speak Klingon.
I don't know what comes first, but since when do we derive our words from
babies' babbling anyway? I mean, what happens in Georgia? The babies may
blurt out "mama" or "abba," but the mom's gotta be saying "That's nice, but
you've still gotta learn that I'm 'deda.'" Why would any other language have
abandoned their words for baby-speak? Or maybe the idea is that one time, at
the very beginning of language, words were determined by babies, and a few of
these words happened to be remarkably stable through the millenia.
Josh
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