In linguistics, mama and papa are considered a special case of false cognates. In many languages of the world, sequences of sounds similar to and mean "mother" and "father", usually but not always in that order. This is thought to be a coincidence resulting from the process of early language acquisition. Etymology 'Mama' and 'papa' use speech sounds that are among the easiest to produce: bilabial consonants like , , and , and the open vowel . They are, therefore, often among the first word-like sounds made by babbling babies (babble words), and parents tend to associate the first sound babies make with themselves and to employ them subsequently as part of their baby-talk lexicon. Thus, there is no need to ascribe to common ancestry the similarities of !Kung ba, Aramaic abba, Mandarin Chinese , and Persian baba (all "father"); or Navajo amá, Mandarin Chinese , Swahili mama, Quechua mama, and Polish mama (all "mother"). For the same reason, some scientists believe that 'mama' and 'papa' were among the first words that humans spoke. Linguist Roman Jakobson hypothesized that the nasal sound in "mama" comes from the nasal murmur that babies produce when breastfeeding: Variants Variants using other sounds do occur: for example, in Fijian, the word for "mother" is nana, in Turkish, the word for mother is ana, and in Old Japanese, the word for "mother" was papa. The modern Japanese word for "father", chichi, is from older titi (but papa is more common colloquially in modern Japanese). Very few languages lack labial consonants (this mostly being attested on a family basis, in the Iroquoian and some of the Athabaskan languages), and only Arapaho is known to lack an open vowel /a/. The Tagalog -na- / -ta- ("mom" / "dad" words) parallel the more common ma / pa in nasality / orality of the consonants and identity of place of articulation. Examples by language family "Mama" and "papa" in different languages: Afro-Asiatic languages Aramaic: Imma for mother and Abba for father Hebrew: Ima for mother and Aba for father Arabic: ("Um") for mother and ("Ab") for father (formal). When actually talking to them, they are called Mama for Mother and Baba for Father Berber: Yemma/Ma for mother and Aba/Baba for father Austroasiatic languages Khmer has different words that indicate different levels of respect. They include the intimate ម៉ាក់ (mak/meak) and ប៉ា (pa), the general ម៉ែ (mai/me) and ពុក (puk),