![]() ![]() Linguist Roman Jakobson hypothesized that the nasal sound in "mama" comes from the nasal murmur that babies produce when breastfeeding: For the same reason, some scientists believe that 'mama' and 'papa' were among the first words that humans spoke. ![]() Thus, there is no need to ascribe to common ancestry the similarities of !Kung ba, Aramaic abba, Mandarin Chinese bàba, Yoruba bàbá, and Persian baba (all "father") or Navajo amá, Mandarin Chinese māma, Swahili mama, Quechua mama, and Polish mama (all "mother"). They are, therefore, often among the first word-like sounds made by babbling babies ( babble words), and parents tend to associate the first sound babies make with themselves and to employ them subsequently as part of their baby-talk lexicon. 'Mama' and 'papa' use speech sounds that are among the easiest to produce: bilabial consonants like /m/, /p/, and /b/, and the open vowel /a/. This is thought to be a coincidence resulting from the process of early language acquisition. In many languages of the world, sequences of sounds similar to /mama/ and /papa/ mean " mother" and " father", usually but not always in that order. In linguistics, mama and papa are considered a special case of false cognates. JSTOR ( October 2011) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification. ![]()
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