''The only case where I could see it being capitalized here is if someone is using it as a form of address or in place of a name:''
Well, I guess I always capitalize ''Mam'' and ''Dad'', because I always use them as a form of address or in place of a name. Otherwise, I use ''mother'' and ''father''.
Did you know that Dad wants to go too?"
"Come on, Mam, let's hurry up!"
"My father wants to go too", never ''My dad wants to go too''
"I told my mother to hurry up", never ''I told my mam to hurry up''.
Do you know why it is that some Americans think someone calling their mother ''Mam'' sounds crazy? Some American once told me that I sounded crazy for calling my mother ''Mam''.
<<Do you know why it is that some Americans think someone calling their mother ''Mam'' sounds crazy? Some American once told me that I sounded crazy for calling my mother ''Mam''.>>
Well they probably thought you meant "ma'am," which is, depending where you're from in the US, either only used to refer to older women or customers in a store, or barely used at all. I guess some places in the US might use "ma'am" in terms of polite "yes, ma'am" when referring to their mother but even that sounds pretty weird to me.
Kirk is right. You capitalise these if & only if they're being used as a proper noun. It's nothing but the usual orthographic rules of English.
"Hello Dad!" I said to my dad. "Goodbye Mum!" I said to my mum.
All the posts by "Travis" on the last page were not by me.
All die Posts von "Travis" auf der letzten Seite waren nicht von mich.
That said, I don't get why some seem to expect that NAE would be spoken or the written the same way as, say, various dialects of English used in the UK, or use the exact same orthographic system or like...
Das hatte nicht "nicht von mich" sondern "nicht von mir" oben in meiner letzten Post sein sollen.
Tata, in South America, I guess it comes from Taita. I am not sure now, but that must be quechua or huarpe or so...
In NZ
mum or mutter*
dad or Vader*
*Used in certain places eg. Dannevike, Haast, etc. I don't know how these came into use could it be the fact these places are Dutch?
words for father: the "aht-tata-ata" link
Quechua: taita
Zuni: tatchu
Seminole: tati
Nahuatl: tatli
Central Mexican Indian Dialects: tata
Dakotah: atey
Inuktitut: a-taa-ta, atatak
Iñupiaq: taataga
Fujian: tata
Samoan: tata
Sinhalses: tata
Tagalog: tatay
Latin (colloquial): tata
Romanian: tata
Slovak: tata
Maltese: tata
Yiddish: tatale
Cymric: tad
Ancient Egyption: aht
Old Gothic (variant): ata
Basque: aita
Hungarian: atya
Turkish & Turkic languages: ata
Russian: aht-yets
Mass comparison is of no use, at least in my not so humble opinion. It's basically the tool of linguistic charlatans, and that isn't saying much in itself.
Of course, in IG such would be IG <fader> and IG <moder>, for En <father> and En <mother> respectively; just had to bring IG into all of this, just because. ;)
Travis, lignuistics is a science, you think that proto-indoeuropean language was just imagined? possibly chemistry and phisics was made by charlatans also?
and yes, those who made this long comparative chart, were not professionals, russian word for father is OTETS it is pronounce as "ahtyets" but new pronousiation has nothing to do with hungarian or more over basque, this is funny.
Linguist, you obviously misinterpreted what I was saying. I was referring to Greenberg-style mass comparison, that is, trying to just compare words in a whole lot of different languages directly, rather than specifically trying to reconstruct historical forms using the comparative method and the oldest known forms available for various languages and like. Mass comparison is the kind of method that is used by people who claim things like that Hungarian is related to Sumerian (which is total nonsense) or that Japanese is related to Tamil (also total nonsense) and so on. It is wholly unscientific, and I would not take seriously any linguist who uses it whatsoever.
I think <tata> is 'daddy' in Polish. Confirmed ?
greg,
You're right.
daddy = tata
mom = mama
father = ojciec
mother = matka
greg,
To be more precise: "daddy" = "tatuś", "dad" = "tata"