About
The character for mother, now commonly seen as '妈', derives from the traditional form '媽', a phono-semantic compound combining the radical '女' meaning woman with the component '馬' meaning horse, which primarily provides the phonetic value 'ma'. This structure reflects a method of character formation where meaning and sound are combined, and in this case, the semantic element categorizes the character as female, while the phonetic element approximates its pronunciation. Historically, the term has maintained its core meaning of mother, though it likely evolved from informal or dialectal usage to become the predominant and standardized term for mother in contemporary Chinese, demonstrating a gradual lexical consolidation without significant semantic shift.
Example Sentences Hide
妈妈在做饭。
妈妈今天很高兴。
我妈妈是老师。
妈妈给我买了一件新衣服。
妈妈在超市里买东西。
妈妈说周末要带我去公园。
我的妈妈非常善良和勤劳。
如果妈妈下班早，她就给我们做晚饭。