2443: Georgian's Backward Familial Terms: დედა and მამა Aug 19, 2021

In Georgian, mother is დედა (dada) and 'father' is მამა (mama). These sounds are fairly standard for what parents are called, but swapped as it is usual to see a nasal consonant for mothers. This pretty exceptional case is not that all the rest have some particular etymology, but it is understood the nasal vowels are easier to produce while nursing hence the association with mothers, and for fathers, words with either [p] or [d] at the beginning are normal, as these will likely be the first non-nasal consonants an infant will utter in general. This is found around the world, but one of a handful of deviations to those rules happens in Georgian to deviate from both rules.