Thinks for Thoughts

AND SO in my years studying linguistics, there was one word that was nearly identical across so many regionally different languages (though there are outliers of course), from europe to most of asia to subsaharan africa to indigenous languages. across nearly all languages this is the first word people learn how to say and maybe the first word humans in general officially named and defined:

mamãe - portuguese 

妈妈 (māmā) - chinese

ਮੰਮੀ (mamī) - punjabi

mamah - mayan (yucatec)

мама - bulgarian, russian, ukrainian

ماں (mäm) - urdu

মা (mā) - bengali

mẹ (may) - vietnamese

ママ (mama) - japanese

అమ్మ (am'ma) - telugu

mama - quechua

મમ્મી (mam'mī) - gujarati

അമ്മ (am'ma) - malayalam

amá - navajo

엄마 (omma) - korean

eme - native hawaiian

onam - uzbek

aana - yupik

mema - tagish

μαμά (mamá) - greek

mama - swahili

أمي (umi) - arabic

mayi - chichewa

माँ (ma) - hindi

mam - dutch

ម៉ាក់ (ma) - khmer

แม่ (mæ̀) - thai

அம்மா (am'mā) - tamil

අම්මා (ammā) - sinhala

amai - zulu

ama - basque

आमा (āmā) - nepali

အမေ (amay) - myanmar (burmese)

mamá - spanish

mom/mum- english

this isn’t actually the first word because we teach babies this word (most likely), but because the “mama” or “ama” sounds are the easiest things for babies to say, and it’s nearly always the only thing they can say at first, and adults across all languages defined their language around that.

Duma 10 weeks January 2015

Edit: This comic was originally made with Hozier’s ‘Nina Cried Power’ lyrics, which I didn’t realize was a song very specific to the Civil Rights movement. In retrospect, overlaying a comic of white lgbtq characters with these lyrics wasn’t a tactful decision.