I'm studying Mandarin for work, and I'm fascinated by the fact that "妈妈" (pronounced "mama") is the word for "mother" in Chinese. I've had to look at a few languages in the past (namely Spanish and Dutch) and I've observed that for concepts that have existed prior to modern times, the modern words typically are not all that similar (i.e English - chicken, Spanish - pollo, Dutch - kip, Chinese - ji). However, there's a "ma" sound in many instances of the concept of mother (English - mother, Spanish - madre, Dutch - moeder, Chinese - mama).
According to Google, pronouncing "mama" seemingly works to convey the concept of mother in Russian and Arabic as well.
Anyone know why that is? Surely the concept of "mother" existed far before the widespread sharing of language?
You've noticed similarities between English, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, and you'll also find maman in French, for instance. Those languages are all part of the larger indo-european languages family. This means they are "cousin", evolved (with varying degrees of interaction depending on the languages) from an ancestral common language. This "proto-Indo European language" was probably spoken a few thousands years BC in central Asia and Anatolia by a people of cattle-herders and pastoralists. It spread and from it stem, notably, Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, the various Germanic and Slavic languages... Hence, madre, mère, mother, Mutter, moeder and the rest. Same for father by the was, as for MANY other words. You said "pollo" and "chicken" don't look alike, but consider "pollo" and "poultry"!
Anyway. Mandarin, Arabic, Hebrew and many other languages that are not part of the IE language family also have the "ma-ma" pattern for their mother-word (and many have the pa-pa or da-da pattern for the father-word). So how can this be explained? The answer probably lies with phonetics - the study of language sounds, the most basic components of speech (phonemes). Ma and Ba/Pa/Da are among the simplest, earliest articulate sounds a human can produce as a child. The general assumption links this fact to the widespread use of such phonemes in the words for mother and father.