father/dad, mother/mum

[GeneD]

Do children address their parents as "mother" and "father"? Or are "mum" and "dad" the most natural options?

 

[emsr2d2]

"Mum/Mom/Mam" and "Dad" are the most natural in BrE. Until I had lots of friends from the Midlands and Ireland, I would have said only "Mum" there, but I've learnt over the years that that's not the exclusive term.
I imagine there are still some (probably rather upper-class) parents who insist on being called "Mother" and "Father" but certainly not anyone I've ever come across.

 

[bubbha]

Addressing your parents as "Mother" and "Father" seems old fashioned and upper class to me. I've only heard it in movies and TV shows, never in real life.

 

[GeneD]

"Mum/Mom/Mam" and "Dad"

Should these words be capitalized when addressing the parents (in writing)?

 

[GeneD]

What if we talk about them? There are two sentences from http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/dad_1:
His dad works in my office.
Can I borrow some money, Dad?

Would anything change if the first example sentence were about the speaker's father?
Sometimes Dad's back home late at night. or
Sometimes my dad's back home late at night.

That's how I would write the word "dad" in the last two examples. Am I wrong?

 

[GoesStation]

It's capitalized only when it's a stand-in for a name.

 

[GeneD]

When talking about their parents, do children say "mother" and "father"?
And what about adults? I guess an adult would more likely use "mother/father" than "mum" and "dad". At least, that's how we would use them when speaking Russian.

 

[Rover_KE]

The same answers apply whether the speakers are children or adults.

 

[GoesStation]

How children address their parents varies a lot in the United States. Some forms are dropped in most families as the children grow up. For example, my siblings and I called our parents Mommy and Daddy until we were teenagers, then adopted the more grown-up forms Mom and Dad.

My step son calls my wife either Mom or Mother. The long form sounds affectionate to me. I think his usage is fairly rare but it doesn't stand out as eccentric or formal.

 

[GeneD]

Surprisingly for me, I've just seen the word "papa" which is exactly the same as the Russian equivalent with the only difference from the English one that the stress (in the Russian word) falls on the first syllable. And right after I made this unexpected discovery, I looked up the word "mama" (just out of curiosity) and found it, too! In the latter case, there is even the variant with the "Russian" stress on the first syllable. Here are the links:
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/papa
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/mama

Are these names used, and if so, how common are they?

 

[emsr2d2]

I don't know any British kids who use those terms. However, there are a lot of EU nationals living in my area and I hear their kids calling them "Mama" and "Papa" fairly regularly. Most of those kids are bilingual so I don't know if they chop and change between Mama/Papa and Mum/Dad depending on which language they're speaking at the time.