in the PEntlate of British Columbia, "father" is _maa_, "mother,"
_taa_, while in the Songish _man_ is "father" and _tan_
"mother" (404. 143).

Certain tongues have different words for "mother," according as it is a
male or a female who speaks. Thus in the Okanak.en, a Salish dialect of
British Columbia, a man or a boy says for "mother," _sk'oi_, a
woman or a girl, _tom_; in Kalispelm the corresponding terms for
"my mother" are _isk'oi_ and _intoop_. This distinction,
however, seems not to be so common as in the case of "father."

In a number of languages the words for "mother" are different when the
latter is addressed and when she is spoken of or referred to. Thus in
the Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Catloltq, three British Columbia tongues, the
two words for "mother" are respectively _at_, _abouk_;
_at_, _abEmp_; _nikH_, _tan_. It is to be noted,
apparently, that the word used in address is very often simpler, more
primitive, than the other. Even in English we find something similar in
the use of _ma_ (or _mama_) and _mother_.

In the Gothic alone, of all the great Teutonic dialects,--the language
into which Bishop Wulfila translated the Scriptures in the fourth
century,--the cognate equivalent of our English _mother_ does not
appear. The Gothic term is _aithiei,_ evidently related to
_atta,_ "father," and belonging to the great series of nursery
words, of which our own _ma, mama,_ are typical examples. These are
either relics of the first articulations of the child and the race,
transmitted by hereditary adaptation from generation to generation, or
are the coinages of mother and nurse in imitation of the cries of
infancy.