Words we take for granted today are parsed like a chemical formula of an alchemy of an ancient thought process used to communicate among human beings - which was designed to reduce any misunderstanding by defining precise rules to parse it.
may-tuhr-fuh-MIL-ee-uhs
This was man's first step towards moving ahead on the curve of civilization progress as important as the "discovery" of the zero" and the decimal system - without which we would not be here.
maa-t-Ri - is the Agent Nount root for Mother. The root 'ma' usually means 'to measure', 'to mete out' and usually used to indicate a "wish" or "prohibition'. So mother usually means an Agent, where "t-Ri" is indicative of that, with "t" making it an Action Noun, as Present Participle.
maa-t-uh or maa-t-uS - are the Genitive and Ablative cases, which indicate "of" and "from" sense with the word.
paa - to obtain, to protect. 'paal' would become someone who is the protector, the lord, the king. This is the basis for the names ending with 'paal' in North Western India to Babylonia (like Hammurabi's father was Amar-phaal and many kings from the region carried this name suffix).
mali - someone one holding and having possesion. In Sanskrit and Hindi, the world "maali" means the Gardner, one who tends to the Plants and Flowers as his own children.
paa-mali - phaa-mily - fa-mily - Note what happened to 'p' sound, and it became 'ph' sound, one is a Hard Sound and the other is a Aspirated Hard sound, and many speakers tend to make it that way, as we go more western wards.
uAh - makes it genitive. "u-AS", "u-Ar", "u-As", "u-Ch" are equivalent sounds and one can see some corruption and confusion taking place between the syllables. This is yet another indicative of Latin being a more recent language of immigrants' offsprings from its parent source.
The word I got from Anu Garg's Word-A-Day Posting.
PRONUNCIATION:
(may-tuhr-fuh-MIL-ee-uhs) 
MEANING:
noun: The female head of a family, household, tribe, etcETYMOLOGY:
From Latin materfamilias, from mater (mother) + familias, from familia (household), from famulus (servant, slave).NOTES:
Paterfamilias is the masculine equivalent of the word.USAGE:
"Equally, as materfamilias, she [Queen Elizabeth] will have time to devote to the motherless Prince William, and to groom him for kingship while his father reigns."Tunku Varadarajan; A New Queen Mum?; The Wall Street Journal (New York, NY); Apr 2, 2002.
"First we have Nora [Nina Poliakoff], materfamilias of the bizarre brood in whose home this absurdist mystery-farce takes place."
K.C. Compton; CSF Opener is a Metaphor For Confusion; Santa Fe New Mexican; Oct 14, 1994.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
They're too close to the trees to see the forest. People in California or New York understand that Alaska is not so big. They live in places where the wilderness once seemed limitless, but they know it disappears. -Edgar Wayburn, environmentalist and doctor (b. 1906)
