Studying foreign languages or plunging into world culture, art (literature, cinema), one can notice that in many languages such words as “mother”, “father”, “brother” sound similar. This is an interesting phenomenon in interlanguage linguistics, which has several theories of origin.
Common origin of words
The words "mother", "brother" and others have a common kinship in the Proto-Indo-European language. This language was distributed until about 4 thousand BC. e. Later it fell into several dialects, which already became the progenitors of most languages used in the modern world.
Gradually, words in languages changed, but there is still a noticeable similarity between them. For example, in Indo-European languages, the word “mother” is as follows:
- Italian - mamma;
- Spanish - mamá;
- English - mama, mum;
- Armenian - մայր [mayr];
- Dutch - mama and so on.
In the languages of a non-Indo-European group, such words sound differently, although similarities sometimes also occur. For example, “mother” in Chinese is “ma”, in Georgian - დედა deda, in Thai - me3e.
The Pre-Indo-European language is an ancient language that has been partially restored by linguists. It is not known exactly where the native speakers of this language lived. The most common opinion is the Black Sea and Volga steppes.
Interesting fact: The study and restoration of the pre-Indo-European language began only in the 20th century.Previously, only “guessed” about the existence of the so-called proto-language.
All languages of the Indo-European group have one ancestor - the Pra-Indo-European language. The most probable hypothesis about the origin of the pre-Indo-European language suggests that it arose in Western Asia (the junction of Asia and Europe) and Eastern Europe.
One of the branches of the Indo-Europeans was called the "pit culture." They lived in about 3 thousand on the territory of southern Russia and modern Ukraine. Genetic studies have shown that some of the languages of Central and Western Europe occurred due to the migration of representatives of pit cultures to these places.
Another theory of similar sound
The fact that “mother”, “father”, “brother” sound similar in different languages is considered an inter-lingual phenomenon. According to another theory, this did not happen because of the general origin of the words, but because of the ease of pronouncing the sounds that are used in these words.
According to studies, a child who is just learning to speak is easiest to pronounce sounds [a], [b], [n], [m]. Such sounds are available in almost all languages. Therefore, children pronounce them first.
Parents often associate these sounds with themselves. Studies also show that the brain of a newborn baby responds best to words in which syllables are found that are nearby. Due to its widespread use, the words “mom” and “dad” were used in interlingua.
What is interlingua?
The International Association of Auxiliary Language introduced a special language - interlingua.Linguists from Europe and the USA have carefully worked on it. The lexical composition of interlingua is represented by international words from Russian, English, Italian and other languages. Words of Latin origin are also involved.
Interlingua is one of the artificial languages, although vocabulary has not been invented anew. Many people can communicate in this language, since the meaning of words is often easy to understand. However, the prevalence of interlingua is still inferior to Esperanto, the international planning language that was created in 1887.
