Why "Mother" Sounds Alike in So Many Languages
Look at the word for mother in four different languages: English says mother, Spanish says madre, Latin said mater, and Hindi says mata. Notice something? They all start with an m sound and share the same beat. That is not a coincidence. These languages are cousins. Thousands of years ago they all grew out of one ancient language, the way branches grow out of one tree trunk.
What You'll Learn
- That many languages are related, like a big family - The name of the ancient parent language: Proto-Indo-European - How to spot matching words called cognates - Why English, Spanish, Hindi, and Greek are all cousins
The Language Family Tree
A long, long time ago, maybe 6,000 years back, people in one region spoke a single language. Scholars call it Proto-Indo-European. We do not have any recordings or writing of it, but we can figure out pieces of it by comparing its children. As those people moved to new lands over many centuries, their language slowly changed. In one place it became Latin, then Spanish and French. In another place it became old forms of English and German. Far to the east it became Sanskrit and then Hindi. All cousins, all from one trunk.
Linguists are word detectives. When they see night, noche, and nacht all mean the same thing in English, Spanish, and German, they know these languages share a hidden ancestor.
Matching Words Called Cognates
When two languages have words that look and mean almost the same because they came from the same old word, we call them cognates. Cognate means born together. Look at the number three: English three, Spanish tres, Latin tres, French trois. They all start with a t sound and mean the number 3. These are cognates, little clues that the languages are related.
Match each English word to its Spanish cognate.
Terms
Definitions
Drag terms onto their definitions, or click a term then click a definition to match.
Why do English mother, Spanish madre, and Hindi mata sound so alike?
Next time you see another language on a food label or map, hunt for a word that looks like an English word. You might have just spotted a cognate.
What is a cognate?
Build a Cognate Chart
Pick three simple English words like water, family, and star. With a dictionary, phone translator, or an adult's help, find each word in Spanish and one other language. Make a three-column chart. Circle the letters that match across languages, and write one sentence saying which pair looked the most alike and why that shows the languages are cousins.
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