mostly mummy,mom,momma,ma,amma etc…
( in Marathi language in india it is " Ayee" )
how about other languages ??
French is Maman, German = mama, Greek = mummia
and Yahoo!Babelfish will have more, I’m sure.
Actually, this is an interesting wikipedia article which addresses why a lot of the words for mother have the /m/ sound. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa
In Fulfulde it is “dada”, which can be a bit confusing at first. (Dad is baba.)
Spanish: madre, mamá, mami. Grandmother: abuela. Grandmother, aragonese: yaya.
Catalan: mare, mamà. Grandmother: avia.
Basque: ama, amatxo. Grandmother: amona.
Indonesian: Ibu
Czech: Matka, mamka, maminka (correspond to English: Mother, mum, mummy)
Finnish: äiti
although, mamma or mama is understood by everyone, if almost never used.
Most of those Ms probably come from Indoeuropean languages that share an original root word, it would be interesting to know if non-indoeuropean languages show a more than evenly distributed of the M sound at the beggining of the word “Mother”.
Irish :-
Mother is máthair.
Grandmother is sean máthair (literally, old mother) or máthair mhor (literally, big mother) or mathair chriona (literally, mother of the heart).
That’s the Egyptian sort! It’s simply “mama”.
ETA Or “mitera” more formally.
Mutter- German
Japanese - Haha, Okaa-san [母 お母さん]
Kannada - Amma
Kannada is a dravidian language and mostly all dravidian languages have " amma" . Examples are Malyalam,Telugu,Tamil etc…
In India, I know marathi has “ayee” for mom. I do not know much about languages of north eastern states of India.
Hebrew has *imma *for mommy and *abba *for daddy
Bengali:
Mother: ma
Mother’s mother: didima (dida)
Father’s mother: thakurma
Mother’s sister: mashima (mashi)
Mother’s brother: mama
Mother’s brother’s wife: mamima (mami)
Father’s sister: pishima (pishi)
Father’s elder brother’s wife: jethima (jethi)
Father’s younger brother’s wife: kakima (kaki)
Hungarian (not Indo-European) is an exception: anya
Ed
Portuguese:
Mãe=Mom/Mother
Mamãe=Mommy
It’s pronounced kind of like “My” but with most of the sound coming out of your nose.
No such thing as an “m” letter in Chinese, but it’s an “m” sound when spoken.
Turkish: Anne (pronounced Ah-nay)
So far, we’re seeing a lot of m-initial words and a-initial words, aren’t we?