East and Central Asian Languages
- Mandarin Chinese, 父亲 (fùqīn) and 母亲 (mǔqīn) for "father" and "mother" respectively. However, parents are usually referred to by their children as 爸爸 (bàba) and 妈妈 (māma) — "Dad" and "Mom". And sometimes in informal language, they use bà and mā for short. (Note: The f sound was pronounced bilabially (as with p or b) in older and some other forms of Chinese, thus fu is related to the common "father" word pa.)
- Korean, 엄마 (eomma) and 아빠 (appa) is mom and dad in informal language, which is ultimately derived from the formal words, 아버지 (abeoji) and 어머니 (eomeoni) as father and mother.
- Kutenai, (a language isolate of southeastern British Columbia) Ma
- Khmer has different words that indicate different levels of respect. They include the intimate mak/meak and pa, the general mai/me and puk, and the formal madaay and ovpuk.
- Japanese, haha is the basic word for mother which does not combine with honorifics *papa (modern Japanese /h/ derives from the bilabial fricative ) which in turn is from the older *p.) Japanese has also borrowed informal mama and papa along with the native terms.
- In Vietnamese, mẹ is mother and bố is father. Má and ba or cha respectively in Southern Vietnamese.
- Thai, me3e (long e with glottalized high-low falling tone). and "father" is pho3o (with aspirated /pʰ/).
- Tagalog, an Austronesian language, mothers can be called nánay or ináy (diminutives of iná "mother"), and dads tátay (by contrast, not related to amá "father"). Owing to contact with Spanish and English, mamá, papá, ma(m(i)), and dad or dádi are also used.
- Uyghur, a Central Asian language, uses ana or apa for mother, and ata for father.
Very few languages lack labial consonants (this mostly being attested on a family basis, in the Iroquoian and some of the Athabaskan languages), and only Arapaho is known to lack an open vowel /a/. The Tagalog -na-/-ta- mom/dad words parallel the more common ma/pa in nasality/orality of the consonants and identity of place of articulation. However, there is nothing of motherhood or fatherhood inherent in the sounds.
Read more about this topic: Mama And Papa
Famous quotes containing the words east, central, asian and/or languages:
“Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West,
From North and from South, come the pilgrim and guest,
When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board
The old broken links of affection restored,
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before.
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did. I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any Asian nation or African nation, in the same state of dominance, and with the same system of colonial profit-amassing and plunder, would have behaved otherwise.”
—Han Suyin (b. 1917)
“Wealth is so much the greatest good that Fortune has to bestow that in the Latin and English languages it has usurped her name.”
—William Lamb Melbourne, 2nd Viscount (1779–1848)