Читать книгу The Origin of the Planet’s Toponyms - Alexander Tokiy - Страница 8

All the basic sounds and protoroots associated with human physiology and its primary needs. You donot have to go far – just remember your basic needs. What is the most important thing for a person? He/she needs air to breathe, food to keep from starving, and water. In addition, he\she needs to continue the family line, needs security, a roof overhead, and other needs that reflected in the language. Therefore, it is objective that besides the sounds of breathing, the first roles in the meaning-making had the “sounds of food”.

Man is a mammalian creature, breastfed. This is why, from infancy, from unconscious memory, we reproduce this deep key sound of the compressed lips —“m” and the following sound of the opening lips—“ma”. In almost all languages, the word “mama” (mother) includes this ancient, imbibed with mother’s milk, protoroot.

In the words “mammoth” and “Mammoth” that came from antiquity, the sound “m” also speaks of food – prey, which our ancient ancestors fed on until quiet recently. The habitation of “mammoths” also reflected in ancient place names: Magadan, Macedonia, Kema, Kama and others.

But with feeding, the child uses not only the lips, but also the tongue. The tongue presses the nipple of the breast to the palate, and the milk under pressure falls on the taste buds of the child’s tongue. What sound formed when the tongue pressed to the roof of the mouth? It is a sound “n”. In some languages, this sound forms the word “nana” with the meaning “mother”. In the Ukrainian language there is a word "nenka".Nurses are traditionally called “nyanyas” (wet-nurses). The famous “nyam-nyam” (yum-yum) is just a fusion of two feeding sounds “n” and “m”. By the way, when it is especially delicious, children like to click their tongue and pronounce the famous children’s word “naka”, which means “nice” (here in English this word sounds a little different). Among the Greeks, this word has undergone multiple remelting and sounds more complicated – “nostimo” (vόστιμο), although it has similar protoroots and the same meaning of “nice”.