Are there words that are common to many unrelated languages worldwide? Words similar to the English words "mother" or "mom" for example, but not including loan words.

author

Loanwords from English are very common today in many languages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loan_words Sep 12 08, 7:07 PM

zbeckabee

Sanskrit versus English: Matar -- Mother Bhratar -- Brother Svasar -- Sister Duhitar -- Daughter Nav -- Navy Deva -- Divine Gau -- Cow Sama -- Same Thri -- Three Etc. http://www.hinduwebsite.com/general/indoeuro.asp Sep 12 08, 8:25 PM

unclerick

A few years ago I read an article about certain words found throughout the many unrelated languages of the world. One of the mysteries in the study of linguistics. One theory is that there may be a common mother tongue or that travel and commerce were much more widespread than previously thought. I just did a bit of web searching myself and did not find a lot of material on the subject. Maybe I am not looking in the right place. The link provided is lengthy but gives some good information. http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/articles/mothertongue.html Sep 13 08, 5:26 AM

Baloo55th

Words like 'oh', 'er', and 'um' (and of course 'ow!') are found in closely sounding forms in a wide range of languages. I take it you're looking for something more complex. As you mention, words connected to mom are found in many unrelated languages. (I use unrelated in the sense that you and I are unrelated. We do probably share an ancestor in some tree shrew like creature if not later...) One of the first sounds made by an infant is 'mmmmm' progressing to 'muhmuhmuh', and countless mothers worldwide have taken this personally and encouraged it and developed it into a recognised word form. (Not all kids do this - Baloo's first word was reported to be 'garden'. Make of this what you will...) I have looked for William F. Allman, and can't easily find much about him, except that he seems to sell quite a few books. Some of the research he quotes is not exactly mainstream. The Nostratic language family is very much a Russian concept, with very little Western support and a fair bit of total rejection. The methods used are a bit dubious - but better than those used in an old issue of 'Plain Truth' which used 'etymology' to prove the British were one of the lost tribes of Israel. (So I'm not really saying much in their favour...) Establishing ProtoIndoEuropean was a bad enough job for the linguists who managed to get a reasonably accepted vocabulary up and running. Going further back than that is almost impossible given the rate of change of language and the conversion of words to new uses (modern examples: an American robin is not the same bird as the one on Baloo's bird feeder; how do you connect a tinned meat with unwanted emails?; buffalo wings?). I feel that once you get outside a family like Indo-European or Na Dene you will find few words other than onomatopoeic or infantile ones that are common to many languages. This is so much the case that the similarity in meaning of Japanese and English 'so' is noteworthy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostratic Some good examples of onomatopoeia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onomatopoeia (it should be remembered that some languages use spellings that seem odd to English speakers - and English does use spellings that horrify some foreign speakers...) and for infantile words http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26425177/ Sep 13 08, 8:54 AM