Why do british people say mum

Posted on April 7, by Ben. Louisa May Alcott. Share this: Facebook Twitter. About Ben Ben T. Smith launched his dialect fascination while working in theatre. He has worked as an actor, playwright, director, critic and dialect coach.

Other passions include linguistics, urban development, philosophy and film. Bookmark the permalink. Ros says:. April 7, at pm. July 12, at pm. Roslyn Ross says:.

July 30, at am. Ros, It probably depends on the dialect. Jon says:. April 8, at pm. Emma woods says:. October 26, at am. Geoff S says:. February 24, at am. Tom says:. May 10, at am. Kelv says:. April 9, at am. April 9, at pm. Mark Flowers says:. The OED seems to share your guess, but without substatiating it: mama, n.

Mark, Good cite! Alan J S says:. October 25, at pm. October 23, at am. Language as ever is a living, evolving entity and always fascinating. Derek Davies says:. January 12, at pm. Scott says:. January 14, at pm. Michael says:. March 6, at am. December 21, at am. Mike Smith says:. February 16, at am. Glen says:. December 21, at pm. The only constant in life is change. HypnoPants says:.

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Well … nobody knows. The etymonline entry on mamma has the following:. So as you can see, there are quite a lot of varying forms of this term, which is quite natural for a pseudo-onomatopoietic word consider the word used to make someone be quiet: shush , shh , hush , etc.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 7 years ago. Active 3 years, 2 months ago. Viewed k times. Improve this question. Anonymous Mouse Anonymous Mouse 55 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 3 3 bronze badges. Mum and mother both have the same vowel, whereas mom and mother do not. In any case, there is no connection between English orthography and English phonology, so you appear to be barking up the wrong tree by imputing that such exists.

It has to be learned by heart just like how to map written Chinese ideograms into spoken pronunciations but also be. Ok, not quite that bad, but you still need many years of training in dead languages and ancient English before you will ever make any sense out of it any other way. Mom is more common in American English, while mum is more common in British English. The charts below show the relative usage of mum vs.

I have isolated the mother sense of mum by charting the phrases my mom and my mum. Still, they are a useful proxy for long-term usage trends that involve these words. Since these words have the same meanings, it can be difficult to remember when to use mum or mom. Only mum is an adjective, so that is an easy choice.

Since mum and United Kingdom both contain the letter U , you can use that letter as a reminder the mum is the British version of this word. Is it mom or mum?