Related to the question about whether facial expressions are universal.
Are there words/verbal expressions/sounds that exist in every language and have the same meaning in every language?
(I’d also count words that are very similar.)
One example, that I believe is universal is M followed by a vowel followed by another M and optionally another vowel, meaning “Mother”.
At least in any language I know, this seems to hold true (mom, Mama, mamma, Mami, …).
Any other examples?
Edit: To clarify, I am not looking for very popular words that have been imported into most languages (like how almost everyone worldwide knows what Ketchup is), but about words that are “native” to humans. So if you pick someone from an uncontacted native tribe and tell them nothing, they would be able to understand/use that word/sound/verbal expression.
In the 13th century, Frederick II was the Holy Roman Emperor. He supposedly carried out a famous language deprivation experiment where he had infants raised by foster mothers who were not allowed to talk to them–they could only feed and bathe then. This was to see if there is a natural human language, he thought Greek or Hebrew might emerge. It turns out that the children all died. In sociology this is taught as proof that humans need language and social interaction to survive. But the whole story comes from a single Franciscan monk who was apparently not a fan of the emperor, so there’s some doubt.
I would put some doubt on that story, since most children that were born deaf still survive.
Also, in many orphanages throughout the centuries, children often didn’t get much more care than described in that experiment.
If that story is true, there was no communication with these children. But children born deaf still learn to communicate via sign language or other motions. The language becomes non-spoken, but is visual and very rich and expressive.
I am able to hold a basic conversation in British Sign Language, don’t worry, I do understand the concept.
But if you know your history, you also know that widespread sign languages are a comparatively recent thing. For most of human existence, not being able to hear/speak was equated with a mental disability. You can still see this in many languages like e.g. in the English word “dumb”, which means “not being able to speak” and “not being intelligent”.
Quite a few deaf children over the millennia grew up in severely understaffed orphanages, because their parents didn’t want to raise a deaf child that would never return their investment. And still many of these children did grow up, in spite of never learning any meaningful language.
Sadly enough, we have a similar case in the extended family. They have a child that was born deaf, but he was only diagnosed as deaf at the age of 4 (it still baffles me how it’s possible for parents to not notice that their <4 year old can’t hear them). His vision is also severely impaired. His parents are conspiracy theorists, so they didn’t believe the doctors and they didn’t accept any medical/psychological/pedagogic help for this kid.
He’s now in his mid 20s, and he can still not communicate in any meaningful way, because he never learned to. He is now in some form of daycare, and the staff there told the parents that he is too old to learn any meaningful form of communication, because he didn’t when his brain was young enough to learn the concept of languages (signed or spoken).
But, I digress: My original mentioning of deaf people was to disprove that it “not hearing spoken language kills children”. But the second point that I brought up (children growing up in orphanages where they are massively neglected) is something that nobody picked up, even though that’s the stronger point.
You’re thinking critically, which is good. But your bias is showing.
need language and social interaction to survive
Being deaf does not preclude one from gaining language or interacting socially.
Don’t worry, I can hold a basic conversation in British Sign Language.
Being deaf does preclude you from hearing spoken language, which was what the mentioned experiment was about. It was specifically about a “natural human language” to emerge. That is why I brought up that point.
The better argument was the second point, which you glossed over:
Also, in many orphanages throughout the centuries, children often didn’t get much more care than described in that experiment.
If you read stories of orphanages <1900, you will see that this experiment wasn’t really unique, but instead the de-facto standard for orphanages. Actually being fed and bathed might have been an improvement to many of these orphanages.
But you don’t even have to go that far. Check out for example the “works” of Johanna Haarer. She wrote the main book teaching women in Nazi Germany how to raise their children. And the main points there were:
- Give the children just what they physically need
- Do not socially interact with the child at all
- If the child screams, lock it into it’s room
- Emotionally deprive the child as much as possible
A whole generation was raised with these principles.
And while that created a ton of traumatized people, there was still not an incredibly high death rate among these children.
Also, check out this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child
There are quite a few examples (especially in the “Raised in confinement” section) of children being raised without any human (or even animal) contact at all. Still they didn’t just die from lacking social interaction. They were severely impaired, many of them for their whole life. But they lived unless they died of some actual medical condition.
“mhm” to signify you’re still listening and following along seems pretty universal to me.
Just to counter the “Mother” example, in Finnish the word is “äiti”. One could argue “mamma” is also used, but in my opinion it’s just Swedish influence and not really used in the Eastern parts.
The topic is very interesting however, and recently I’ve read about the theory of universal grammar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar which is a theory roughly saying that every human has an innate biological understanding for certain rules of grammar - independent of upbringing, culture and the like. For example, every human language will distinguish between nouns and vowels and verbs. The concept is fascinating, but so is the criticism. You could argue that the whole idea is just unfalsifiable pseudoscience or post-hoc explanation for what has been observed.
Regarding the “mother” example: Most languages also feature words that describe “mother” but don’t follow the pattern (e.g. “mother”).
I meant the word that is used by babies/small children and in connection with babies/small children.
Does this apply to “äiti”? (Serious question, I have no idea of the Finnish language).
I always figured it’s because it’s one of the first sounds a baby can consciously make.
Universal grammar sounds very interesting, and the criticism is a well. But yeah, it’s kinda hard to falsify this.
On the other hand, these basic elements that universal grammar identifies seem to me (=>not a linguist) like something you can’t do without. I wouldn’t know what a language would do e.g. without a noun/verb separation. There are things and there are actions, which are two fundamentally different concepts. Makes sense that this separation exists in every language.
I’m far from any kind of authority on this, but I think you’ll find the similarities in language (like ma mama mom mum mother mummy) come from the fact that very many languages today stem from the same root languages.
What I find far more interesting is where they diverge.
Ananas Anana Aнана́с Ananass Nanas Mananasi
… In English?
Pineapple…
Wtf!
Edit: I’ve just remembered reading that “mama” and “papa” come from the sounds that babies make naturally…
https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/why-does-mother-sound-the-same-in-so-many-languages
To add to the Anannas thing: Here in Austria old people use the word Anannas for strawberries. Because there was a version of strawberries that were called “Ananas Erdbeere” (so pineapple strawberry) before there where pineapples available in Austria. So they linked the word Anannas with strawberries.
Redarding mama/papa, that’s what I figured. Mama is one of the first sounds a baby can reliably make, so it’s super similar in most languages, while papa/dada is the second sound they make, and thus it differs more.
Well, in Georgian language “mama” is the word for father and “deda” is the word for mother so.
As to the actual exoressive words that are not about items then no, I don’t believe there’s any “universal words” - some words kinda became “natural” for many cultures like “ok”, “'alo” (when answering a call). Yet Turkish for “ok” is “tamam” and older folks might not understand “ok”. In my experience even sounds are not quite the same across the globe.
Overall I think there’s definitely a way to universally express basic needs and feelings like anger, sadness, confusion, etc. with sounds and expressions combined - people might not get the cause but they’ll get the point.
P. S. On the second thought - crying is quite universal, yeah.
Very interesting! Thanks for the detail with the Georgian language words. I would have not expected that.
But, still, both are words with consonant + vowel + consonant + vowel, so still kinda similar, but reversed to most languages I know.
P. S. On the second thought - crying is quite universal, yeah.
Yeah, I think most of the non-verbal sounds for emotions would be pretty universal. Crying, laughing, angrily screaming. I’d expect all tantrums by two-year-olds worldwide to sound about the same :)
