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Both are informal words meaning father. It is interesting that I couldn't find a similar word in other Germanic and Latin languages. It looks that this word has directly migrated from central asia to british isles !

QED
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    I think you are missing some data. From etymonline: "dad (n.) recorded from c.1500, but probably much older, from child's speech, nearly universal and probably prehistoric (cf. Welsh tad, Irish daid, Czech, Latin, Greek tata, Lithuanian tete, Sanskrit tatah, all of the same meaning)." – Otavio Macedo Oct 25 '13 at 18:18
  • I don't think it's universal because there's no similar word in Irnian languages. – QED Oct 25 '13 at 18:32
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    I have never heard of "Turkish dada" and cannot find it in a dictionary. The pan-Turkic word for "father" is ata. – fdb Oct 25 '13 at 18:39
  • Yes as seen in "Atatürk". Come to think of it, "ata" does look like it could be derived from IE, but it could just as well be a coincidence (always likely with such short words) – Typhon Oct 25 '13 at 19:06
  • /daedae/ in Azeri Turkish is an informal synonym of ata – QED Oct 25 '13 at 19:26
  • Then it's probly influenced by surrounding languages, which have had the term for thousands of years. If there's only one word involved, it's either a borrowing or a coincidence. I've always been able to find a couple of coincidences between any pair of languages, like Yucatec Maya ho:l and English hole, which mean the same thing. You need many pairs of words, with the same sounds changing in parallel between them, to posit anything like descent from a common ancestor. – jlawler Oct 25 '13 at 20:18
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    This is a very famous special case. Here's the beginning of the Wikipedia article: In linguistics, mama and papa refers to the sequences of sounds /ma/, /mama/ and similar ones known to correspond to the word for "mother" and "father" in many languages of the world.

    The basic kinship terms mama and papa are said to comprise a special case of false cognates. The cross-linguistic similarities between these terms are thought to result from the nature of language acquisition.

     – hippietrail Oct 26 '13 at 15:56
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    There's also the SE-Linguistics answer here – Gaston Ümlaut Oct 26 '13 at 22:23
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    @hippietrail's comment is spot-on! The first syllables produced by children tend to be similar cross-linguistically, and parents across cultures continue to think the child must mean them. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. – robert Oct 27 '13 at 01:08
  • @GastonÜmlaut: Aha I thought we'd had this topic here before (-: – hippietrail Oct 29 '13 at 04:39
  • @hippietrail Yeah I suspect it'll keep being asked, and posters will keep thinking they've discovered some new language relationships because of similar 'mama' words! – Gaston Ümlaut Oct 29 '13 at 05:03
  • In Hindi DADA means grand father (generally); also in Bangla it means elder brother – ARi Oct 29 '13 at 08:21

2 Answers2

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In Turkish father is baba. Maybe Turkish spoken in Cappadocia has dadas (not sure), which is a native Anatolian word (attested also in Cappadocian Greek). Turkish dede however means grandfather. Generally local dialects might have picked up native Anatolian words such as Lydian taada, Luwian tatta and Carian ted. Those extinct languages are all Indo-European.

In any case all those words are lallnamen (baby speech), which goes beyond the limits of language groups and are far older than Indo-European and Altaic.

Midas
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In Turkish father is Baba, but rest of other Turkic languages is Ata. Well, according to your logic a word for dad is father. Lol, so c'mon guy. In every Turkic language Dad is usefull, even we Turkic peoples have ancient saga called "Dədə Qorqud" means Dad Gorgud. As well as in Azerbaijani Nənə for Nan/Grandma, in middle Turkic using Bitik for Book, Beyin for brain, Söyle(mek) for To Say, Yer for Earth, Ertä for Early, Boɣ/Boɣča for Box, But (in Altai Turkic) for Foot, Kuday/Kut for God/Got, Dön/Tön for Turn and etc. etc. Do you wanna more?

Lingua
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