Are there any words that are almost completely universal?
I’m always amazed by the fact that facial expressions that correlate with emotions are pretty much the same across cultural lines…the grimace, shoulder shrug, etc…at least in my experience.
It got me to thinking, are there any words, or sounds that mean something (uh uhh, mmm mmm, etc.), that most cultures share? “No” or something similar is the only one I can think of.
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raising your eyebrows and “ooooooo” meaning you’re interested
Telephone. Varying slightly in spelling and pronunciation, is fairly universal. Lot of other new technology words are pretty universal too.
I don’t mean no. I mean the word no.
A gesture with arms out palms raised and pointing out means stop universally.
“No” has no similar sounding word with the same meaning in many languages.
“OK” has a uniquely American original and is understood in most English speaking Western countries.
I doubt it means much in most of Asia where more than half of all humans live.
Do we have any cultural anthropologists who can tell us about universally understood gestures?
I actually have heard that there are cultures in which gestures mean opposite things, i.e., shaking the head up and down means “no” and sideways means “yes” so I’m not sure I accept your premise. Most languages have similar, but not the same, sounds for Mama and Papa but this is because these are some of the easiest vowel-consonent sounds to say.
I have heard “ok” widely used in SE Asia by non-English speaking people. It also seems to be widely used in many African nations.
Aaaaaah…..!(scream). Ha ha ha…...!(laugh)
We naturally spit out this same word in some certain situation(although it might vary from one person to another).
Chocolate
French: chocolat
Spanish: chocolate
Italian: cioccolato
German: Schokolade
Dutch: chocolade
Portuguese: chocolate
Esperanto: cokolado
Danish: chokolade
Polish: czekolada
Swedish: choklad
Indonesian: coklat
Maltese: cikkulata
Norwegian: sjokolad
Finnish: suklaa
This may not have been exactly what you meant, but in my experience all cultures have a word for Hello and Thank you. Languages reflect their cultures so you can’t always get an exact translation of something from language to language. The fact that each language has a word to express the same thing is pretty remarkable in itself. One might argue that the word no is really rooted in English and that globalization has caused many cultures to adapt this as a word rather than having created the word no independently as part of their original language.
@lilikoi This is clearly true of “o.k.” as well.
“Fuck you” sorry about the profanity
Spanish speakers use este not uhmmmm.
@Sampson I LOVE your answer. The only thing that changes is the enjoy, drink, trink…
There seems to be some confusion between borrowed words, like “OK”, and words that are similar across many languages for some other reason, like “mama/papa”.
“OK” and “telephone” are found in many languages simply because they have been borrowed from English.
A word like “no” is found in many European languages simply because these language share a common ancestor.
“Mama/papa” are found in many languages for more interesting reasons. The sounds /m/, /p/ and /b/ are easier to pronounce than other sounds. They are the first sounds produced by children. Parents listen to children babbling “mama” and “papa”, and assume that they’re talking about them. That’s why so many unrelated languages have similar words for “mama/papa”.
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/linguistics/documents/where_do_mama2.pdf
@morphail From what I understand many children say da very early…leading to many American Dad’s being very happy with their child’s first words. But, I think most countries use pa, papa, popi.
Yes, the sounds /n/, /t/ and /d/ are the next sounds to be produced after /m b p/.
Most Americans that I know say the baby says da before ma. I’m thinking because they hear their mom say “dad” over and over. Daddy will be home, where’s daddy, etc. The mothers are more verbal. Just a guess. I’ve been around a lot of children saying da da da da DA DA DA DA DA LOL.
I heard once that “mama” has relatives as far away as Sanskrit. That’s a lot of coverage.
“yeah” & “no” are almost universal.
@Nullo Sanskrit and English are distantly related. But “mama” is found even further away: Luo, Cree, Chinese. “Mama” is common in languages the world over not because all these languages are related, but due to the reason I stated earlier.
@judochop No is universal, yes not so much. Si, oui, hi (I don’t know how to spell it in English for Japanese),
No way “okay” or “no” are found everywhere, nor “chocolate”. In the West, maybe. But even right here in Europe, we have the Greeks saying “ne” and meaning “yes” (whereas “no” translates to “ogie”).
And if my old Latin teacher hasn’t been misinforming me, the Romans of yore actually didn’t have words for yes and no at all. They’d use something like “I do” and “I don’t” instead.
The fact that a word has cognates in many related langauges doesn’t mean it’s universal, not even almost. It just means one word spread from one language to a number of others. That’s just a historical accident. Consider also that nobody on earth used those words before they spread around like that. (Somewhat less applicable for “no”, I guess.)
“Universal” means everyone, everywhere, always. There are certainly aspects of language that are universal in that sense – modern linguistics is all about identifying, relating and explaining those aspects – but words are usually language-specific.
Still, there’s indeed “mama” and “papa” that are pretty much universal, for the reason @morphail explained. Although even there, in Latin, “mamma” means not “mother” but “breast”. I think the ancient Romans assumed the child was asking for milk instead of addressing his mother.
And to repeat another thing that has already been said, there are also interjections like “ooh” and “ouch” and the like, but it’s debatable to what extent these are words and not just sounds. I would hesitate to consider them part of the language proper.
Looking at it in another way, I’m pretty sure there are things that every last language has a word for, things like “man” or “sun” or “day”.
Interjections like “ooh” and “ouch” are not universal either. I mean every language probably has a way of saying “ouch”, but it doesn’t necessarily sound like English “ouch”. In Japanese it’s “itai”.
That’s true, like the French say “aïe” instead.
Still… I think the variation here is relatively limited.
Well, it has to do with the anatomy of babies and their facial muscles. The a and m sounds are the most simple sounds. Open your mouth and make a sound: aaaaaaa – Close your mouth and make the make the same sound: mmmmmm – Now take this in turns. Voilà. Mama.
@morphail Seems I answered without enough knowledge about “no.” I just knew for sure “yes” wasn’t, I should have just responded to that. Thanks for the info.
@morphail, thanks for the link!! I’m conducting an independent study on linguistics, and came across this page while doing research. I had read that pdf in the past, but had so much trouble finding it this time! Thanks again!!
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