mom and dad

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mama and Papa are the most common endearing words for mother and father in German and are generally the first two words that a toddler learns or speaks. The Stern couple give vivid observations on the acquisition of these two words. Phonically very similar lall words with the same meaning can be found in countless languages ​​worldwide.

etymology

Lallworts as the universality of language acquisition

The words Mama , Papa or very similar lall words like Baba , Dada and Tata as names for the parents occur in numerous languages ​​worldwide. In 1959, the linguist Roman Jakobson stated in what is now a classic essay ( Why 'Mama' and 'Papa'? ) That this similarity is neither evidence of the genetic relationship of these languages ​​nor onomatopoeia , but is explained by physiological factors that cause the The language acquisition of all toddlers is required, i.e. independent of the mother tongue, as a kind of universal . Phonetically, the unrounded open central vowel [ a ] is the first vowel a child can articulate. The voiced bilabiale Nasal [⁠ m ⁠] is the first consonant, caused by the closing of the lips and the bilabial plosives [⁠ p ⁠] and [⁠ b ⁠] and their alveolar counterparts [⁠ t ⁠] and [⁠ d ⁠] come about after the child has learned to open the shutter of the lips again. The doubling of the syllables ma , pa , ta to mama , papa , tata is psycholinguistically referred to as affect gemination . These first sound sequences of a child do not yet indicate anything, their assignment to a person is culturally determined. In some languages, mom can therefore also designate the male parent (e.g. in Georgian ) and dad the female parent . But German words are mother and father phonetically from the Indo-European derived .

Research by Virginia Volterra in 1979 found that the term “mom” meant a call or request rather than the mother. The exclamation “Papa”, on the other hand, came up in situations that had to do directly or indirectly with the father. For example, if the child wanted to be kidnapped, which the father usually did beforehand. Here, too, the word "papa" did not stand for the father. Volterra determined a second phase, after which the term “papa” is now also used for assumptions and wishes that have to do with the father, for example when the child thinks that the father is about to come into the room. In the next phase, the term is concretized on the father or on situations that are directly related to him. In the final phase, the child generalizes the term "papa" by naming all adult men that way.

Language usage in German, French, English and Italian

The German written language , however, only borrowed the expressions Mama and Papa from French in the 17th century , together with a few other family names ( uncle , aunt , grandfather and mother , cousin and cousin ), which have since been replaced by the older Germanic equivalents ( uncle, aunt, Vetter, Base ) and are now so well integrated into German vocabulary that they are hardly perceived as foreign or loan words. Both pronunciation and spelling were something eingedeutscht : the place of the German foreign nasal vowels of French. Maman joined each having an open [⁠ a ⁠] , in spelling the final n was logically deleted (which is not as Frz. distinct consonant is articulated, but rather indicates the nasalization of the preceding vowel), and in both Mama and Papa the word accent shifted over time from the second to the first syllable or was completely leveled (the variety of gradations exemplifies Heintje's presentation from Mama 1967). At least in terms of educational language , the emphasis in the final was quite common for the longest time, but today it seems rather antiquated, graceful or endeavored to Frenchize. The additions “Frau Mama” and “Herr Papa”, which were fashionable as salutations in elegant households in the 18th and 19th centuries , are always emphasized, but only used in ironic speech .

Also around 1700 papa came from French into English as well as Italian (here written papà , there as in French emphasized, and not to be confused with papa, i.e. the Pope ). In Italy today the word is in common use in all classes and dialects; In Tuscany alone , on the other hand, a native babbo was able to assert itself with babbo , which Dante already mentions in De vulgari eloquentia (around 1305, German about eloquence in the vernacular ) as a typical example of children's language, but therefore also includes the words that are themselves not fitting in serious literature; In the 33rd Canto des Inferno he uses it himself, but here, as it were, as a symbol of the difficulty of expressing oneself in the often inadequate vernacular language ( If 33, 7-9: 'ché non è impresa da pigliare a gabbo / discriver fondo a tutto l'universo / né da lingua che chiami mamma o babbo ' ).

In English, however, papa couldn't prevail against the traditional nicknames dad / daddy . Especially in the 19th century it enjoyed a certain fashion, but then, as now, it is often ridiculed as affected mannerism by circles who believe it is better. Recently, various media reported a perturbing trend among American " hipsters "; In daycare centers in hipster strongholds such as Williamsburg , more than half of the children are said to call their fathers a dad (as of 2016). Regardless of the upper-class usage as a loan word (pronounced in French), papa is also used in the United States in particular in families or communities of Central and Southern European immigrants. The name is also more popular with families with two fathers, who are looking for a second, clearly distinguishable nickname alongside dad .

In Scotland (and by Scottish emigrant families), however , papa is sometimes used as a nickname for the grandfather , while for the father, as in the rest of the English-speaking world, dad is reserved.

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Mama  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Papa  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Clara and William Stern: The Child Language. A psychological and language-theoretical investigation. Unchanged reprint of the fourth, revised edition 1928. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1975, ISBN 3-534-07203-0 . P. 19.
  2. ↑ a b c theatlantic.com .
  3. ↑ a b Dieter E. Zimmer This is how the human being is discussed. Munich, 2008 ISBN 978-3-453-60065-2
  4. ↑ Adolf von Kröner : Papa and Mama . In: The Gazebo . Issue 13, 1889, pp. 220 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
  5. ↑ Mama. In: Digital dictionary of the German language .
  6. ↑ Papa. In: Digital dictionary of the German language .
  7. ↑ Like the “ Hamburger Sie ” today , these collocations conspicuously combine two incongruent language registers that are otherwise used by private resp. are reserved for the social sphere and therefore signal contradicting statements about the emotional or social distance between the speaker and the addressee.
  8. ↑ papá. In: Vocabolorio Online by Treccani.it - ​​L'enciclopedia italiana , as viewed 6 December 2016.
  9. ↑ babbo. In: Vocabolorio Online by Treccani.it - ​​L'enciclopedia italiana , as viewed 6 December 2016.
  10. ↑ Norma Alessandri: Festa del papà, la Crusca risponde: ecco perché in Toscana si dice babbo. In: La Nazione of March 17, 2016.
  11. ↑ Lorenzo Tomasin: Lifespan and Linguistic Awareness: The Case of 18th-century Italian Autobiographers . In: Annette Gerstenberg and Anja Voeste (eds.): Language development. The Lifespan Perspective. John Benjamin, Amsterdam 2015, p. 148.
  12. ↑ Lizzie Crocker: Hipster Dads Now Want to Be Called 'Papa'. In: The Daily Beast . November 11, 2016.
  13. ↑ 'Daddy' not cool: why hipster dads want their kids to call them 'Papa'. In: The Guardian. (Online edition), December 4, 2016.