BillandBob.com

Linguistically, “ma” and “da” are among the easiest phonemes to say, which is why they occur universally when babies babble. But they don’t become identifiers, with symbolic meaning, until later.

If you are a linguist, baby talk is not a cute and meaning-lite semi-language used with infants. Babble is the first step towards helping nursery-form words, which classify an infant’s early language acquisition environment. Who inhabits this environment with a child? Parents.

Developmentally, babies babble nonsense sounds to try them out. The simplest form of babble is a consonant followed by a vowel: labial (/m/, /p/, /b/); dental (/t/, /d/, /n/, /l/) consonants followed by a wide vowel sound (/a/) are the most dominant. The opening and closing of the mouth is the most natural order of sound production. Repetition of phonemes set identifiers (names) apart from other babble a baby is making as it explores language. “Nursery names for mother and father, like the earliest meaningful units emerging in infant speech, are based on the polarity between the optimal consonant and optimal vowel,” writes Roman Jakobson in his 1962 article “Why ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’?” the most comprehensible linguistic examination of the global similarities for the names of parents.

Sam and Cate were 10-1/2 months past their due date when they started differentiating words back in early October. According to my list of Cate’s Words, her first was “da” and she learned to say, “maamaa,” by Oct 31. Cate’s second and third words were “Hi Ki’y”, addressed with glee to the cat.

According to my list of Sam’s Words, her first and second words in mid-October were “mmm[ilk]” and “ma”, followed shortly by the greetings [H]”aii!” and “byyyye!” Sam learned to say, “Hi, Da” by Nov 11. So they’ve known who we are for a couple of months, but they mostly didn’t address us these ways.

Both girls can respond to directions like, “let’s go find Dad in the kitchen” or “please go to Mama in the bedroom” by heading off in the right direction, and usually, ending up with the other parent. Being able to shepherd girls verbally is a useful development!

In addition, the girls enjoy looking at the pictures of people on our walls. I always call out, “that’s Dad,” when we look at the pictures with Bill. One day last week, at the beginning of naptime, Sam looked up at the photos of Dad over her crib, and seemed more excited than usual. She exclaimed, “Da! Da!”, looked at me for recognition, then looked back at his photo and exclaimed, “Da!” several more times. Later that day, Cate got in on the action, also exclaiming, “Da!” But I didn’t see where this was going until Christmas Eve.

Monday morning, we put Sam and Cate in baby jail to play safely while Bill and I packed things for our day trip to Galveston. At some point, I heard Sam exclaim, “Ma!” Startled, I looked up to see her looking right at me, and I asked, “do you mean me?” and she smiled. Cate took it all in and said, “Ma”, too.

Then, after lunch, Baba Jean joined us for an outing to the playground next to Oppe Elementary. We started with sliding down the slides for a while, and the slides were damp and slow enough for both girls to tackle hands-free sliding for the first time. Next, they practiced running/walking/crawling up and down the grassy slope next to the jungle gym. Daddy Bill went up the hill, Baba Jean and I waited at the bottom, and Sam and Cate went back and forth between us. When they started to get tired, they started to call to me. As they turned from Dad, looked down at me, and started down the slope, first Sam and then Cate, would yell for “Ma!”. And if I looked away from them to chat with Baba Jean, they’d yell for me again.

Finally, when we got home, Dad changed Cate’s diaper, and I changed Sam’s diaper. But their diapers had leaked, so I left Bill watching both girls for a minute (always perilous!) while I ran to grab our Christmas jammies (thanks, Auntie Em!) from the laundry room. As I returned, Sam decided to get down from our bed by turning around and scooting backward over the edge, apparently unaware that it’s nearly 3 feet down to the floor. Bill noticed her just in time, and leaned in, pinning Sam to the side of the bed. She was fine, though startled and a little squished, and when he rescued her, she yelled at him: “Dada!!!” As he picked her up to comfort her, she addressed him again insistently, “Da!,” making her dismay plain to any listener.

Wow. After more than a year of being virtual extensions of their existence, we have apparently become our own separate people, and we have names. We are “Ma” and “Da.”

[Second] Best Christmas present ever.