Talk:ყორანგალი

The etymology of the Georgian word as a loan from Armenian is almost certainly not accurate. There are at least three very specific reasons: (1) Georgian never borrows Armenian velar consonants as uvular consonants; of all the loans that are demonstrably loans from Armenian into Georgian (and there are many), this would be the first. (2) The word is actually decomposable in Georgian: ყორანი /q'orani/ means 'raven' and გალი /gali/ means gall, a kind growth on plants. If you look broader at the name of this plant in other languages it is clearly a calque from them; it is called e.g. 'Cock's head'. (3) The alternative form ოლანგარი /olangari/ is a very obvious loan from Megrelian: Mengrelian *q' shifts regularly to a glottal stop, and word-internally earlier voiceless *l shifts to /r/ in Megrelian. All of these suggest that the Georgian word is if anything the source of the Armenian, not the other way around. Trwier (talk) 18:18, 16 October 2022 (UTC)


 * is obviously a modern scholarly borrowing from, so your theory does not work. Vahag (talk) 19:41, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
 * That's simply wrong. The word is already attested centuries before the Russian conquest, in a legal deed dating to 1348: "მთითა, ბარითა, ტყითა, ველითა, ვენაჴითა, წყლითა, წისქ[ვ]ილი\თა, გალითა, სათიბითა, სანადიროთა..." The alternative form ღალია too is already attested in the late 12th century. 31.146.119.216 20:07, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
 * You have confused it with . Vahag (talk) 20:47, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Wrong again -- გალია would become გალიითა in the instrumental, not გალითა. The immediate context also discusses aspects of agriculture; 'cage' makes no sense here. Trwier (talk) 21:52, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
 * That is why the publisher on page 11 has (sic) after გალითა. I don't know if that is just an irregular form of or a different word  which Chubinov glosses as "closet, storeroom", but it certainly is not the modern technical "gall, growth on plants"., can you look at it? Vahag (talk) 23:04, 16 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Of course. And it doesn't need to be identical to a modern technical term to be attested long before contact with Russia or to be involved in the construction of this particular lexical item. Semantic shifts with no corresponding phonological or morphological shift are ubiquitous in languages. In any event, you did not take into account the much more serious problems I pointed out above: that the word has a uvular consonant unexpected for an Armenian loan, and its alternant form also underwent sound-changes typical of Megrelian. This points at the very least to the great antiquity of the lexical item in Kartvelian. Trwier (talk) 23:35, 16 October 2022 (UTC)