Asili ya neno "mama"

[Che Kalizozele]

Wakati niko shule, yaani shule ya msingi, sekondari na hata chuo, nilikuwa naamini kabisa kwamba kiswahili ndiyo lugha yenye umiliki wa neno mama.

Pia nilikuwa naamini lugha nyingine zinazotumia neno mama, zitakuwa zimetohoa kutoka katika lugha ya kiswahili.

Lakini nimegundua lugha nyingi sana zinatumia neno hili hivyo kuingiwa na udadisi wa kutaka kujua asili hasa ya neno hili.

Wapi lilikoanzia na imekuwaje limetapakaa kiasi hiki?

Mwenye kujua tafadhali.

 

[Pianist]

neno 'mama' mara nyingi ni neno la kwanza ambalo mtoto huanza kutamka pale atakapoanza kuongea. Nafikiri hili ni jambo la kiasili zaidi kwa sisi binadamu. Kwa hiyo mtu wa karibu zaidi na mtoto angalipo mdogo huwa ni mama, hivyo huchukua jina hilo. Nadhani hii itakuwa ni sababu kwa neno 'dada', ambalo pia ni miongoni mwa maneno ya kwanza kutamkwa na mtoto kwa ufasaha kwa kiasi chake.

 

[chobu]

Ingia kwenye uwanja wa lugha

 

[Che Kalizozele]

neno 'mama' mara nyingi ni neno la kwanza ambalo mtoto huanza kutamka pale atakapoanza kuongea. Nafikiri hili ni jambo la kiasili zaidi kwa sisi binadamu. Kwa hiyo mtu wa karibu zaidi na mtoto angalipo mdogo huwa ni mama, hivyo huchukua jina hilo. Nadhani hii itakuwa ni sababu kwa neno 'dada', ambalo pia ni miongoni mwa maneno ya kwanza kutamkwa na mtoto kwa ufasaha kwa kiasi chake.

inawezekana ukawa sahihi,lakini tatizo langu mimi ni wapi lilitokea.Kwa mfano katika lugha ya kiingereza pia kuna neno mother hivyo nilipokuja kusikia wazungu wanatumia mama nikajua wametuibia msamiati wetu.nilipokuja kugundua kwamba na wachina nao wanatumia mama,hapo nilichanganyikiwa kwa sababu kuu mbili,kwanza kichina kina historia ndefu kwa ufahamu wangu na pili sijasikia kama wanatumia neno lingine zaidi ya mama.Kutokana na uzee wa lugha ya kichina,nikahisi kuna uwezekano mkubwa kiswahili kiliiba sehemu hili neno.Kama vile haitoshi,makabila mengi yanalitumia neno hili tofauti inakuwa ni matamshi.

Suala la kwamba mama ni neno la asili kwa kigezo kwamba ndiyo neno la kwanza kujifunza naomba nitofautiane na wewe,kwani mtoto hawezi kuja na misamiati yake duniani,ni lazima hili neno alilikuta linatumika ndiyo na yeye akaanza kulitamka.Ninahisi bado kuna haja ya kujua hasa neno mama lina asili ya wapi

 

[Che Kalizozele]

Ingia kwenye uwanja wa lugha

Hahahaha,muheshimiwa si ndo nimekuja huku katika jukwaa lenu hadhimu la lugha ili mpate kunijuza,ebu anza kushusha vyoint mkuu.

 

[Che Kalizozele]

Nimejaribu ku-google,hii ni sehemu ya maelezo niliyoyapata kuhusiana na asili ya neno mama.


Jakobson's explanat ion: parents do it.

The correct explanation of the origin of the mama​

/papa words was provided by Roman Jakobson, one of the greatest linguists of the

twentieth century. Jakobson was born in Russia in 1896, but after the Bolshevik
revolution of 1917 he fled to the Czech city of Prague. There he joined a group of Czech
and Russian linguists in setting up the Linguistic Circle of Prague. The Circle produced a
number of important works in linguistics, until it was broken up by the Nazi occupation
of Prague in 1939. Forced into exile yet again, Jakobson fled first to Sweden and then to
the United States, where he eventually obtained a chair at Harvard. He continued
working in the USA until his death in 1982.
Jakobson contributed to many different aspects of the study of language, from
child language – where he did fundamental pioneering work – to poetics. But here we
are concerned with a little article he published in 1959. In that article, called ‘Why
"mama" and "papa"?', Jakobson was responding to the appeal by George Murdoch
mentioned earlier, and in it he turned his vast experience to the question we are
considering in this chapter. And he had an answer.
Jakobson was among the first linguists to examine what children do when they
begin acquiring their first language, and he was the first linguist to report observations
which are now repeated in every introductory textbook. The key point here is that
children go about the business of acquiring a first language in a highly orderly way. This
is true for the acquisition of speech sounds, of vocabulary and of grammar, but here we
are concerned only with speech sounds.
A young child at first produces no vocalizations other than sobbing and shrieking.
Then it moves on to the stage we call ​

​

cooing – making those familiar but hard-to-describe

baby noises. At the cooing stage, the child is producing no recognizable speech sounds,
and its parents do not believe the child is beginning to speak.
But then something momentous happens: the child abandons cooin g and moves
on to the ​

babbling stage. Unlike cooing, babbling involves the production of​

recognizable speech sounds – consonants and vowels. These speech sounds are
combined into syllables, with each syllable typically consisting of a consonant followed
by a vowel, as in ​

da and pa. Very frequently in babbling, however, these syllables are​

reduplicated – repeated – and so what the child produces is something like ​

​

dada and papa.

Now, not all speech sounds are equally easy to produce, since some speech
sounds require more work from the speech organs than others. Among the vowels, the
easiest sound to produce is [a] – roughly the vowel of ​

father – because this vowel​

requires no effort at all from the tongue or from the lips. Just open your mouth and make
a noise, and the noise you get is the vowel [a], unless you go out of your way to produce
some other vowel. Accordingly, [a] is the first vowel that children manage to produce,
and it is the first vowel heard when babbling begins.
Likewise, not all consonants are equally easy to produce. For example, the
consonant [​

T] is notoriously hard to make. This is the consonant which occurs at the​

beginning of English ​

think and at the end of mouth. Not only is this peculiar consonant​

famously hard for foreign learners of English to acquire, it is also difficult for Englishspeaking
children, and it is always one of the very last speech sounds mastered by
children learning English. Even a three-year-old may still be saying ​

fink for think and​

​

mouse for mouth. Naturally, then, a babbling child seldom produces any noises like​

​

TaTa.​

What, then, are the easiest consonants to produce? These are the sounds made
entirely with the lips, like [m], and [p]. These are easy because they require
absolutely no work from the tongue: all you have to do is to put your two lips together
and then release them. Accordingly, these ​

labial consonants, as they are called, are the​

first consonants produced by babbling children. Of the three, [m] is slightly easier to
make than the other two, since the other two require a little work at the back of the mouth
– the raising of the velum – which is not required for [m]. As a result, the very first
babbling sounds produced by young children are usually of the form ​

mama , followed by baba ​

​

and papa. This is universally true, regardless of the adult language surrounding the

child, because these are simply the easiest sounds to make, and so they are always the
first sounds produced by children.
The next easiest consonants to produce are those made by raising the front of the
tongue, which we call ​

coronals. Among the coronals are [n], [d] and [t]. Accordingly,​

after labial sounds appear, the next babbling noises to be heard are usually those of the
forms ​

​

nana, dada and tata.

All other consonants are still harder to produce. As a result, babblings like ​

​

kaka,

​

lala​

​

, sasa and vava are not often heard from a child until after the easy noises like mama

​

and ​

​

dada have been produced hundreds of times.

So, universally, young children begin to babble by saying ​

​

mama, followed

quickly by ​

​

baba and papa, then soon after by nana, dada and tata. And how do their

parents react to this behaviour?
Parents are eager to hear their child beginning to speak, and they listen
impatiently for a child's "first words". At the cooing stage, the child is producing no
recognizable speech sounds, and so the parents do not suppose that the child is trying to
speak. However, once the child moves on to the babbling stage, the eager parents
suddenly start hearing familiar speech sounds and recognizable syllables – and so they at
once conclude, delightedly, that little Jennifer is trying to speak.
Now, this conclusion is an error. There is absolutely no evidence that babbling
children are trying to speak, and in fact linguists are pretty sure they are not. Babbling
appears t o be no more than a way of experimenting with the vocal tract, and babbled
sounds like ​

​

mama and dada are not intended as meaningful utterances. But the parents

think otherwise: they are sure little Jennifer is trying to talk.
But what is Jennifer trying to say? This is not obvious, and in fact the fond
parents can only guess what Jennifer means to say. And what guess does Mother come
up with? Does she guess that little Jenny is trying to say ‘banana'? Or ‘telephone'? Or
‘go away'? No. In almost eve ry case, Mother concludes that little Jenny is trying to say
‘mother'.
This happens because Mother ​

​

wants little Jennifer to say ‘mother', and because

she ​

​

wants to believe that Jenny is trying to say ‘mother'. So, as soon as Jennifer manages

to produce any recognizable sequence of speech sounds at all, and particularly when she
repeats that sequence, Mother happily concludes that Jenny is saying ‘mother' as well as
her little speech organs will allow her. As a result, one of the very earliest babbling
sequences, usually something pretty close to ​

​

mama, is taken to be "Jennifer's word" for

‘mother'. And, of course, one of the earliest babbling sequences to follow, usually
something like ​

​

papa or dada, is taken to be Jenny's word for ‘father'. The word for

‘mother' is assigned first because infants spend more time with their mothers than with
their fathers.
So far, of course, ​

​

mama is merely "Jennifer's word" for ‘mother'. But Mother is

more than happy to use "Jennifer's words" in speaking to little Jenny, and it doesn't take
her long to start making heavy use of the distinctive style we call ​

​

baby talk in speaking to

Jennifer. In particular, Mother will refer to herself as ​

​

mama when she is speaking to

Jenny, because that is "Jennifer's word", and so Jenny will presumably understand it.
Sometimes the process goes no further than this, and ​

​

mama remains merely a

baby talk word for ‘mother'. But often – ​

​

very often, in fact – it goes further. Adults

begin using the baby-talk words ​

​

mama and dada not just in talking to babies, but in

talking to older children, and even in talking to other adults – such as their own parents.
This last point is especially important. Consider what happens to little Jennifer as
she grows up. Jenny's mother has taught Jenny from infancy to address her as ​

​

mama,

and Jenny may very well continue to call her mother ​

​

mama after she ceases to be an

infant. At age five, at age ten, at age eighteen, at age 35, she may still be calling her
mother ​

​

mama, because that's what she learned to do in early childhood. Even though

Jennifer has learned the traditional and more formal word ​

​

mother, she seldom applies it

to her own mother, whom she prefers to address as ​

​

mama (or as mummy or mommy or

​

mum ​

​

or mom or some other baby-talk form in this vein).

Jennifer may go further. When talking to her friends, she may refer to her own
mother as ​

​

my mama , or my mum, or whatever, instead of as my mother. She may refer to

her friends' mothers in the same way: as ​

​

your mama or your mum, or whatever.

You can see what might happen. Bit by bit, the baby-talk form may begin to
infiltrate the adult language, and it may begin to displace the traditional word for
‘mother'. Eventually it may even drive the older word out of the language, leaving the
​

mama ​

​

word as the only word for ‘mother'. And, of course, the papa word may do the

same to an older word for ‘father'. If this happens, then the language will come to have
something like ​

​

mama as its ordinary word for ‘mother', and something like papa or dada

​

as its ordinary word for ‘father'. And this process, of course, explains the frequency of
the ​

​

mama/papa words in the world's languages.

We don't need to appeal to a hypothetical remote ancestral language of all
humankind to account for the frequency of the ​

​

mama/papa words, and anyway no such

proposal can possibly explain the facts as we have found them. We have a beautifully
simple explanation in terms of the universal behaviour of young children.
And this simple explanation has many virtues which we have not yet considered.
We have already seen that Jakobson's account explains the central observation that
​

mama​

​

/papa words are constantly re-created in language after language. But there is

more.
As we saw above, the new word for ‘mother' is most often of the type ​

​

mama, but

sometimes it has the form ​

​

nana instead, and once in a while, as in Old Japanese, we get

one of the less usual forms like ​

​

papa or dada. The new word for ‘father', however, is

slightly more complicated. We get new words of the form ​

​

papa or baba quite often, but

just about as often we get words of the type ​

​

tata or dada instead. And, of course, every

now and again we get ​

​

mama for ‘father', as in Georgian, or occasionally even kaka, as in

Turkmen.
Jakobson's account explains these facts rather well. A child ​

​

typically produces

​

mama ​

​

before baba or papa, and all of these before tata or dada, and all of these before

moving on to slightly more difficult sounds like ​

​

kaka and yaya and chacha. And the

proud parents ​

​

typically assign the first such sequence they hear repeated to the meaning

‘mother', and the second or so to the meaning ‘father'. But none of this is engraved in
stone, and individual children and individual parents may happen to do something​

slightly different.

​

 

[Pianist]

Sasa muanzisha thread mbona hujaeleza kama unakubaliana au haukubaliani na jakobson?

 

[X-PASTER]

Ingia HAPA ili kuchangia zaidi misamiati ya lugha ya Kiswahili na Asili yake.

 

[Roulette]

neno 'mama' mara nyingi ni neno la kwanza ambalo mtoto huanza kutamka pale atakapoanza kuongea. Nafikiri hili ni jambo la kiasili zaidi kwa sisi binadamu. Kwa hiyo mtu wa karibu zaidi na mtoto angalipo mdogo huwa ni mama, hivyo huchukua jina hilo. Nadhani hii itakuwa ni sababu kwa neno 'dada', ambalo pia ni miongoni mwa maneno ya kwanza kutamkwa na mtoto kwa ufasaha kwa kiasi chake.

Kwa warundi na wanyarwanda mama inatamkwa "Nyoko" na bibi ni "nyoko kuru". hapo je?

 

[Che Kalizozele]

Sasa muanzisha thread mbona hujaeleza kama unakubaliana au haukubaliani na jakobson?

Huyu bwana maelezo yake yanaingia akilini kidogo na pia yanatoa muelekeo wa kwanini neno hili limetapakaa sana duniani,maelezo yake pia yanaonesha kuwa hakuna lugha ambayo inaweza kujigamba kwamba ndiyo inamiliki hili neno mama.Suala la kwamba yuko sahihi au la,kwa kweli sina uhakika lakini ameonesha jitihada ambazo tunatakiwa kuziheshimu.

 

[Che Kalizozele]

Kwa warundi na wanyarwanda mama inatamkwa "Nyoko" na bibi ni "nyoko kuru". hapo je?

Unajua mie nilifikiri ni wakerewe tuu ndiyo ambao utumia,"Nyoko" wakimaanisha mama kumbe na warundi nao utumia neno hili!!!!!!!

 

[Che Kalizozele]

Ingia HAPA ili kuchangia zaidi misamiati ya lugha ya Kiswahili na Asili yake.

Kaka nimejaribu kuangalia katika yale maneno japo nijue kiswahili neno mama walilitoa wapi sijaona,labda ni kwa sababu maneno yako mengi sana hivyo kuna kaugumu kuliona,hata hivyo nashukuru kwa jitihada zako

 

[LivingBody]

Huyu bwana maelezo yake yanaingia akilini kidogo na pia yanatoa muelekeo wa kwanini neno hili limetapakaa sana duniani,maelezo yake pia yanaonesha kuwa hakuna lugha ambayo inaweza kujigamba kwamba ndiyo inamiliki hili neno mama.Suala la kwamba yuko sahihi au la,kwa kweli sina uhakika lakini ameonesha jitihada ambazo tunatakiwa kuziheshimu.

Ni kweli amejitahidi kueleza kwa njia ya google,
ila ametoa msaada kwa mtoa mada na wengine.

 

[Che Kalizozele]

Ni kweli amejitahidi kueleza kwa njia ya google,
ila ametoa msaada kwa mtoa mada na wengine.

Nakubaliana na wewe mkuu.

 

[Mawenzi]

Unajua mie nilifikiri ni wakerewe tuu ndiyo ambao utumia,"Nyoko" wakimaanisha mama kumbe na warundi nao utumia neno hili!!!!!!!

Hata Wanyakyusa wanatumia nyoko wakimaanisha mama, although nowadays it is used derogatorily

 

[Senior Bachelor]

Hahahaha,muheshimiwa si ndo nimekuja huku katika jukwaa lenu hadhimu la lugha ili mpate kunijuza,ebu anza kushusha vyoint mkuu.

Madhali umekuja kujifunza lugha basi sina budi kukusahihisha. Ni adhimu sio hadhimu, ni hebu sio ebu, vyoint sio kiwahili. labda ungesema maelezo (kama ulimaanisha "points" kwa kiingereza. Endelea kujifunza kwa unyenyekevu.

 

[Uliza_Bei]

neno 'mama' mara nyingi ni neno la kwanza ambalo mtoto huanza kutamka pale atakapoanza kuongea. Nafikiri hili ni jambo la kiasili zaidi kwa sisi binadamu. Kwa hiyo mtu wa karibu zaidi na mtoto angalipo mdogo huwa ni mama, hivyo huchukua jina hilo. Nadhani hii itakuwa ni sababu kwa neno 'dada', ambalo pia ni miongoni mwa maneno ya kwanza kutamkwa na mtoto kwa ufasaha kwa kiasi chake.

watoto wengi wanaanza kutamka baba na maneno mengine ni dada au kaka: lakini mama huja baadaye

 

[Che Kalizozele]

Madhali umekuja kujifunza lugha basi sina budi kukusahihisha. Ni adhimu sio hadhimu, ni hebu sio ebu, vyoint sio kiwahili. labda ungesema maelezo (kama ulimaanisha "points" kwa kiingereza. Endelea kujifunza kwa unyenyekevu.

Muheshimiwa kile kitufe cha shukurani sijakiona,nashukuru kwa masahihisho.

 

[Pota]

asanteni sana kwa wote mliochangia mada hii. nimejifunza something, kwani kuna avatar moja hapa jf ina bango linalosomeka
NYOKO PRIMARY SCHOOL etc. nilikuwa najiuliza ipo katika nchi gani? sasa walau naweza hisi kuwa ipo ama rwanda ama
burundi.na ina maana nzuri tu ya MOTHER PRIMARY SCHOOL kwa ki english

 

[Hance Mtanashati]

Wakuu nauliza hivi asili ya neno mama ni wapi?

Kwa sababu waswahili wanaita mama, wahindi wanaita mama, wanaijeria wanaita mama,wazungu wanaita mama ,yani kwa kifupi lugha nyingi sana zinatumia hili neno

Sasa asili yake ni wapi??