Talk:ჭიქაჲ

There are many issues here. The first is that the primary meaning is not the material out of which it is made, since it has always been possible to use this word for a drinking vessel made of any kind of material, including metal, stone, crystal, ceramic and animal horn, in addition to glass. (Also, for most of Georgian history, glass cups were extreme rarities, so they most often were *not* made from glass.) Anyone who speaks Georgian knows that the main way to refer to glass as a material is მინა or შუშა; ჭიქა is rarely used outside the context of a drinking vessel. So the English words 'cup, mug', which do not bear any implications at all for material, are more appropriate than 'glass'. (The comment in the edit-history that 'cups' are not usually of glass is simply an error.)

Given these facts, the second issue is more salient. This is that it is almost certainly a loanword into Georgian-Zan from a Nakh-Daghestanian language. Avar has č̣:iḳ:á-ro for a wooden drinking vessel. If that is so, then Megrelian ჭირქა actually preserves the ND oblique suffix via metathesis. Also anyone familiar with Georgian phonology knows how frequent metathesis is and how frequently /r/ in coda position is deleted, so it is not surprising that preliterary *č̣ikra would shift to *č̣irka and then č̣ika. Trwier (talk) 20:11, 1 December 2022 (UTC)