Lately,
linguists have been speculating on the communality of verbal
communication. It has been suggested that all of the extant thousands of
languages and dialects in the world today come from a single shared
source. That, ultimately, we all speak some variation of one original
mother tongue. Certainly, the very first word most of us utters is
identical everywhere: “Ma.”
The word for mother, world wide, is based on ma, or close enough. Ma is the earliest form of the Indo-European root word for mother, mâter, which is reflected in the Latin, mäter; the Greek, métèr; and the prehistoric Germanic, möthar. These, in turn, have become madre in Spanish and Italian, mère in French, mae in Portuguese; mite’ra in modern Greek; mutter in modern German, moeder in Dutch, moder in Swedish, mör in Danish, mor, in Norwegian and mother in English. Mother is mat’ in Russian, matka in Polish and Czech, majka in Serbo-Croatian, máyka in Bulgarian, anya in Hungarian, ema in Estonian, mâte in Latvian, nâna in Albanian, ima in Hebrew, anne in Turkish, and omí in classic Arabic. In the many languages of Sub-Saharan Africa, too, ma is prevalent: mamá in Ibo and Hausa, mma in South African Sotho, mbuta in the Congo, and inate in Ethiopian Amharic.
The similarity holds in Asia as well: aamaa in Nepali, mae in Thai, nanay in Philippino, omoni in Korean, chomo in Tibetan, moqing in Mandarin and mamá in Cantonese. In the Telgu and Tamil languages of India, mother is amma, and she is mata in Hindi. In Pakistani, mother is man, which means “moon” and “wisdom.”In Japanese, one’s biological mother is called, ha ha, while the ubiquitous bar hostess who, with offers of sake and sympathy, listens tenderly to a man’s troubles is known as mama-san.
Interestingly,
words that designate father do not display such a remarkable
resemblance. The universal inspiration for the maternal appellation, ma,
must then come from some inherent quality unique in the relationship
with the mother. It is not difficult to imagine how this etymological
concurrence might have come to pass. Behold a scene played out billions
upon billions of times throughout human existence:
A
baby, cradled close, is nursing. Along with the rich nourishment of her
mother’s bountiful body, she blissfully imbibes warmth, security,
contentment, love. Her small head buried in soft breast, she
enthusiastically sucks. Mmmm. Mmma, mmmaa, mmaaaaaa. Ma! Mama!. Ma, as in “maternal,” Ma, as in “mammary,” Ma, as in “mammal.” Mama means “mother’s breasts” in many places, and ma frequently refers to ”milk” as well as “mother.” Certainly from the point of view of a dependent child, mother is milk.
