Fri, Aug 08, 2025 page8

• A linguistic tribute on Father’s Day

  • By Hugo Tseng 曾泰元
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  Father’s Day, as celebrated around the world, has its roots in the early 20th century US. In 1910, the state of Washington marked the world’s first official Father’s Day. Later, in 1972, then-US president Richard Nixon signed a proclamation establishing the third Sunday of June as a national holiday honoring fathers. Many countries have since followed suit, adopting the same date.

  In Taiwan, the celebration takes a different form — both in timing and meaning. Taiwan’s Father’s Day falls on Aug. 8, a date chosen not for historical events, but for the beauty of language. In Mandarin, “eight eight” is pronounced ba ba, which sounds like baba (爸爸), the affectionate word for “dad.” What is more, when two sinographs for “eight” (八) are written vertically in the traditional way, they visually resemble the character for “father” (父), adding a striking layer of visual and cultural symbolism. This clever linguistic and calligraphic fusion makes Taiwan’s Father’s Day one of a kind — rooted not in folklore or events, but in phonetics and script.

  The uniqueness does not end with dates or wordplay. Delving into the vocabulary of parenthood reveals intriguing cross-linguistic patterns. In Mandarin, we have formal fuqin (父親) and informal baba (爸爸). In English: father and papa. The parallel is uncanny — each language pairing formal and casual terms that not only share meaning, but similar sounds. Certain Chinese dialects even use the word die (爹) for “dad,” closely resembling the English dad.

  Are these mere coincidences? Did English borrow from Chinese, or vice versa? The answer, linguists say, is neither.

  These similarities point instead to what academics call language universals — features common to human languages that stem from shared cognitive and physiological patterns. No example better illustrates this than the word “mother.”

  My own curiosity began in junior high school, when a classmate trying to master English pronunciation wrote “mother” phonetically in Chinese as “made” (媽的, literally “mother’s”). To our adolescent ears, it was funny, even magical — the word mother sounded like “mom” in Chinese, and meant exactly the same. At the time, I was struck by the coincidence. Years later, as a doctoral student in linguistics, I would come to understand this as a profound example of linguistic universality.

  Etymologists generally break “mother” into two components: “mo” and “ther.” The “mo” part corresponds to “ma” or “mom” — a sound nearly every language on Earth uses for “mother.” The “ther” is a suffix that appears on Indo-European kinship terms, likely meaning “family member.” Thus, “mother” essentially means “ma family member.” The initial “m” sound is a bilabial nasal, made by closing the lips and allowing air to pass through the nose — a sound easily produced by infants. It is likely that “ma” or “mama” originated from the instinctive sounds babies make while nursing.

  Now, back to father. The component “fa” mirrors the Mandarin fu (父), while “pa” (as in papa) aligns with baba (爸爸). Phonetically, “p” is a bilabial plosive — the same sound infants easily master. In historical linguistics, the evolution from “p” to “f” is well explained by Grimm’s Law, a foundational principle describing systematic sound shifts in Indo-European languages.

  Then there is “dad,” which mirrors the Chinese die (爹). Both derive from “dada” — a common babbling pattern among infants, formed by repeating the “da” syllable. This duplication appears universally: “Ma” becomes “mama,” “pa” becomes “papa,” and “da” becomes “dada.” Research has shown that “ma,” “pa,” and “da” are among the first syllables babies around the world learn to pronounce.

  So why do so many cultures use “ma” for mothers and “pa,” “ba,” or “da” for fathers? It is not because of cultural borrowing, but because of something far deeper: a shared human experience. These early sounds are not just linguistically convenient — they are emotionally primal, instinctively tied to the people who raise us.

  On this Father’s Day, whether celebrated in June or Taiwan’s special “88” day, we are reminded that the words we use for our fathers are more than names — they are echoes of our first breaths, our earliest bonds, and the universality of love.

  Let this day be not only a tribute to our fathers, but a quiet celebration of the language that connects us to them — across tongues, across time.

  Hugo Tseng has a doctorate in linguistics, and is a lexicographer and former chair of Soochow University’s English Department.
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