A fascinating fact is that there is a single word, “mama,” which is spoken almost identically in nearly every language across the world.
This universal term was studied in-depth by the Russian linguist Roman Jakobson, who discovered that humans find it easiest to produce vowel sounds with open mouths. Even newborn babies can make vowel sounds, and as they begin to experiment with other noises, they often start with the simpler consonant sounds made with closed lips, such as /m/, /p/, and /b/. Babies will often combine these sounds with an open vowel sound, resulting in repetitions of “ma-ma,” “ba-ba,” “pa-pa,” and so on.
