[Hunting4Treasure]

In keeping with the idea I was onto, 3 posts above, I think I may have just been shown a sign... My daughter was just looking at the May 2004 issue of Nick Jr Magazine. I glanced over and noticed a *map*. I took a closer look and got excited!

"Mum's the Word...
for mom in England and Australia. Did you know that the word for mother starts with the letter M in many languages? Some think it's because the "M" sound is one of the first ones babies learn to make.
What do you call your mother? Ma? Mama? Mom? Mommy? Circle the place near where you and your mom live. Then make an X near where your grandmothers came from."

Here's the best part... All over the illustrated map are the words for 'mom', in their languages!
'Mother' in *their* 'tongue'?!?

Canada - MOM
United States - MOM
Mexico - MAMI
Hawaii - MAKUAHINE
Brazil - MAE
Greenland - MOR
England - MUM
Germany - MUTTER
Russia - MATb
France - MERE
Spain - MADRE
Portugal - MAE
Italy - MADRE
Greece - MANA
China - MAMA
India - MATAJI
Egypt - MEWET
Democratic Republic of Congo - MAMA
Botswana - MME
Australia - MUM

Without having this card, or seeing the answer box, I have no idea what the PMs want. But could this be it, or could I be getting close?

[ambskunk]

SpinneNetz wrote:

Yeah, its hard to see from the scan, but I can make out:

I have the card and see one difference and three additions that you'd never get from the scan:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

I think Guinea should be Liberia and that Georgia, Jordan and Israel have been missed. There is definitely a gap for Palestine. Hey - might have missed Liechtenstein too, get out those microscopes

[chimera245]

magicmancraig wrote:

chimera245 I can confirm that's wrong. What was your thinking behind it?

There are links in Esperanto to Spanish, Portugese, English, Russion, Swahili among others, which would seem to link the majority of the nations - though only vaguely.

The only problem with that is Japan - which unfortunately forms a problem to Proto Indo-European (I think that is the description of PIE) surely, as I was under the impression that Japanese was descended from the mainland china/mongolian language families.

[Hunting4Treasure]

nandita wrote:

Does anyone think that there may be some kind of Tower of Babel connection? The idea of there being a mono-genesis of language? That was my first thought when I saw the card...

I was just thinking of http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr
Is there something we need to translate into the languages of those countries?

Also, thinking back to the *original* language... Would that be Hebrew?

[SilentlyBroken]

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

language

also didn't work.

[Guin]

this may be of use

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/PERSPRO1.htm

I can confirm it is not

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

pre-nostratic proto italic

[EDIT] just a thought if we are looking at PIE could we be aftera literal translation of mother tongue into PIE?

and another site

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mttoc.html

and it is mentioned in Bill Bysons book

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0380715430/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-9134679-2685700#reader-link

[SilentlyBroken]

I found:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/014014305X/ref=ase_theultimathome02/026-3251340-0506024

unsure if spoilers work on links, but it was worth a try

The next step:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

From there I tried the ISBN number of the above ^ but that was returned as incorrect

Funnily enough, I found that upon searching for adders and their countries of origin (relating tongue to snake etc).

[eta] From reading that link etc, I tried:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

sarcasm

but that was returned as incorrect as well.

[magicmancraig]

chimera245 I can confirm that's wrong.

What was your thinking behind it?

[chimera245]

Anyone tried:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

Esperanto

??

[Stratman]

Thought there may be some cryptic way of getting...
Sansevieria Trifasciata
...from the countries

Its a succulent plant called mother in law's tongue

tried it...
nope!

[SilentlyBroken]

Tried

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

Christianity

but that was incorrect too.

[eta]Could it be something to do with water, seeing as the background is water?

[Fuseunderground]

If you take the country of origin of the languages (mother country?)
‘I’ for Ireland ‘A’ for Arabia (or Arab lands)
‘N’ for Netherlands

This reduces the amount of countries
Then with the first letters you can spell
‘Singular Speak’ unfortunately with a ‘J’ left over.

Whether this points to Japan,
or is going in completely the wrong direction. Who knows?

I hope this helps someone.

Rich

[Stratman]

Hmm...I had taken this to mean a search for a single ancient language from which the languages of the marked countries derived. I now think that is unlikely - it is certainly not what mother tongue means...a person has a mother tongue - usually the language they learn first.
From Wikipedia (mother tongue)
Definition based on Origin: the language(s) one learned first (the language(s) in which one has established the first long-lasting verbal contacts).
Definition based on internal identification: the language(s) one identifies with/as a native speaker of;
Definition based on external indentification: the language(s) one is identified with/as a native speaker of, by others.
Definition based on competence: the language(s) one knows best.
Definition based on function: the language(s) one uses most.
Maybe we have been barking up the wrong tree.

[unclean]

Following on from the previous post, I have also tried:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

Nostratic and Eurasiatic

Both unsuccesful

[Stratman]

Thought I had found something here...
Havent had time to read it all yet

http://www.grsampson.net/Q_PIE.html

tried

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

pie proto-indo-european

nope!