I want to discuss a topic that probably crossed every multilingual mind at least once. Why/ how are languages from different regions so distinct yet similar? As a fluent speaker of Korean and English and a learner of Portuguese and Arabic, I am constantly surprised how unexpectedly extremely similar phrases and vocabulary pop up across different languages.
For example, when describing an unfortunate and unpopular shop without any customers, Koreans often use the phrase “파리 날아다닌다" which means “flies are flying around the shop.” This phrase was coined because in places without a lot of people, there would only be flies. At the same time across the world in Brazil, 26 hours away by plane even now, a similar phrase was being formed. When I was reading about Brazilian Portuguese expressions and saw the word “moscas,” which means “flies” being used to describe an unpopular shop, I was internally screaming with pure amazement. It was so interesting that the two countries that are so far apart from each other and hence had barely any interactions thought of the same thing to describe the same thing.
Also, let me discuss one of my oldest curiosities which I have not found a clear answer to yet: the words for “mom” and “dad.” Has it ever crossed your mind that so many languages have a repeated “m” sound in the word for “mom” and a “b” or “p” sound for “dad?” In the languages that I am familiar with:
Korean: 엄마 (mom, pronounced “um-ma”), 아빠 (dad, pronounced “a-ppa”)
English: mom/mama, dad/papa
Portuguese: mãe/mamãe (mom), pai/papai (dad)
Arabic: ام (mom, pronounced “umm”), اب (dad, pronounced “ab”)
When I ask this question to others, the first answer I hear is that the “m” sound and the “b” sound are the easiest sounds, hence the first ones that a baby can make. This makes sense, but then how did all of these languages decide to assign the “m” sound to the mom and “b” sound to the dad? Why not the opposite?
Another important aspect of languages is the pronunciation of words. Why did each language choose to use the certain sounds that it uses? In my personal journey of learning languages, I thought that Korean and Portuguese pronunciation were very close and English was quite different from both of them while Arabic was somewhere in the middle of the scale. I always felt that if we make Korean sounds a bit more musical, it would sound like Portuguese and if we add a bit more density and stickiness to Portuguese, it would sound like Arabic. So what went through the mind of whoever first created these languages when they chose to only include those specific sounds in their language and disregard the others? Why are the sounds of Korean and Portuguese more similar than that of Portuguese and English even though the latter share more similarity in roots and grammatical structure?
These are only some of the examples of unexpected similarities between languages.
So many other questions remain regarding how languages developed. Unfortunately we live in an era where these languages are already made and developed, so tracking down its origins is a hard process. But still, it is quite intriguing to see how with a little bit more curiosity, even the most common words that we use can seem mysterious.