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.
Hi! I’m a linguist, and this topic is one that comes up commonly.
The answer is no. There is no such thing as languages/words that are native to humans. You can have things that are widely shared (mama/papa based on baby-talk as an example), but seeing as language itself is not universal to humans, there is no such thing as a word that is universal.
Feel free to ask any questions if you’re curious!
How common are things like the bouba/kiki effect in linguistics? It seems there are some sounds that are based on something other than learned behavior, how much does this cause commonality in real language?
Hi! Sorry for the delay, took a break from social media.
It’s often an effect of local convergent evolution, effectively.
Like if the group next to you has certain associations, well you’re likely to have similar associations. It’s also hard to verify some of that research due to the nature of how it’s conducted.
No worries, thanks for the response!
Interesting answer, scanning through the Wikipedia article on kiki/bouba it makes sense that we don’t really have solid evidence that it isn’t a learned trait. It may be hard to get a population of people who developed language independently of all other humans ever and see if they maintain the strong correlation with naming kiki and bouba.
So I guess that brings up another question I have kinda wondered about. What is the most “isolated” spoken language on the planet? By that, I mean the language that evolved most independently of other spoken languages. Is there anything interesting that can be learned by comparing such a language to the European languages that are dominant among the global population?
Great question! Here’s the thing though, the language had to come from somewhere right? The people had to come from somewhere.
The assumptions and associations that make up the basis of language are thousands of years old. Obviously languages change and societies change, but no one has ever protested about the “k” sound being too “harsh” or something, or at least not seriously.
Even an extremely isolated population would likely still be heavily influenced by whatever the parent language is.
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Haha I first read your “The answer is no” sentence and thought you were literally referring to the word “no”. If anything would be universal or at least well understand, I would think “no” would be a likely candidate. Guess not!
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.
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.
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.
There is not a single word that’s universal to all languages.
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Even if there had ever been one at some point, there are languages that have/had word retirement as part of the culture speaking it: If a word is used as someone’s name and that person dies, that word is now taboo and a new word is needed to refer to what the old word stood for.
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Conlanging, especially by laypeople, often explicitly makes up most or all of its vocabulary from scratch or uses cyphers to make the connection invisible. I wouldn’t be surprised if a people made up their own secret language from scratch, maybe initially with very similar grammar, that developed into a native language for a community.
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Have you heard of Cockney rhyming slang? Take a word like “fart”, use a two part word that rhymes with it, like “raspberry tart”, then drop the rhyming part. That leaves you with “raspberry” meaning “fart” and no discernible connection to the old words this utterance/meaning pair came from.
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Sign languages are languages as well, and in multiple instances developed from the ground up without influence from the surrounding spoken languages.
Have you heard of Cockney rhyming slang? Take a word like “fart”, use a two part word that rhymes with it, like “raspberry tart”, then drop the rhyming part. That leaves you with “raspberry” meaning “fart” and no discernible connection to the old words this utterance/meaning pair came from.
So that’s where “blowing raspberries” came from? Pretty neat.
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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
I read somewhere recently that “OK” is the most widely used expression accross languages. Not universal per se, but close enough.
this is the product of globalization, more to come
