South Asian Languages
Dravidian languages, like Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, and Tulu, all have the words amma and appa.
- Though amma and appa are used in Tulu, they are not really Tulu words but used due to the influence of Kannada. The actual words for mother and father in Tulu are appe pronounced and amme pronounced .
- In Telugu, amma and nanna are used for mother and father respectively. 'aam aam' is also for food and 'appa' for snacks in baby language.
- Malayalam also uses acha for father. The terms papa and mama are used for baby food and breast milk respectively in this language.
- In Tamil, "Thaai" and "Thanthai" are original Tamil words for mother and father, Amma and Appa came in later due to external influence.
Among Indo-Aryan languages:
- Hindi has the word mātā as the formal word for "mother", though the shorter informal term ma is more common. Due to English borrowings, the words mamma and pappa are also common.
- Assamese has ma and aai as "mother" and deuta and pitai as "father".
- In Bengali, the words maa and baba are used for "mother" and "father".
- In Urdu the word for mother is maa/mɑ̃ː ماں formally and ammi اممی informally, and father is abbajan اببجان formally and abba اببا informally.
- In Sinhalese, the word for mother is "amma" and father is "thaththaa". Though in some areas of Sri Lanka, particularly in the Central Province, Sinhalese use the word "appachchi" for father.
Read more about this topic: Mama And Papa
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