16 Comments
That's interesting. Is "mama" as the word for "mother" a result of colonization, or did that word exist in Swahili before then?
1639
"M" is one of the first consonants that a baby learns to make. Since the mother is the one most in contact with the baby, it is natural that this sound becomes symbolic of the mother. It has nothing to do with colonization, but rather universal sounds.
- 53
The word mama has nothing to do with colonialism. The /m/ sound is one of the most common sounds used for mother in many languages of the world
mai = Ndau , Shona mama = Swahili , Yoruba, English (baby language), Russian, Ukrainian, Maori, Greek umama = Xhosa, Zulu, Ndebele maman = French modar = Tajik mamma = Latvian
I hope that helps
- 560
Yes, mama is a common way to adress women who are 30+ (or younger who are obvious mothers). Younger women you call "dada" - sister, and old women you call "bibi"- grandma. Or mama, because once a mother , always a mother. :)
There was a reply under another sentence stating that:
the noun for a family member, on its own, always refers to the family of the speaker. To actually add the possessive pronoun would be disrespectful, suggesting lack of closeness.
Was that information incorrect?
Is that for English or Swahili? I say "my mom" or "my mother" all the time, especially when talking to someone outside of my family.
did the same. The sentence "Mother is Kenyan" sounds unnatural in English, it feels like you ought to say whose mother we are talking about
- 53
When you refer to one Kenyan you use "Mkenya" , when you refer to more than one you use "Wakenya"
m- (singular) , wa- (plural)
We need to qualify whose mother is being talked about. 'Mama yangu ni Mkenya' or 'Mama yake ni Mkenya' sounds much better.
Could one say the/a mother is Kenyan? Because their aren't articles for the/a in swahili?
