Talk:კალმახი

@‎კვარია, Solarkoid, are there any regular phonetic correspondences between the Kartvelian forms to warrant a Proto-Kartvelian reconstruction? They look very similar to each other, as if they are relatively recent borrowings. I understand that the Proto-Kartvelian was first reconstructed by Illich-Svitych within the bullshit Nostratic theory and based on Svan alone. Other Nostraticists then repeated the reconstruction for their ridiculous long-distance comparisons with Eurasian fish words starting with k-. And of course the Armenophobe User:Samarra11 pounced on this theory to replace the proposed Armenian origin. --Vahag (talk) 18:39, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I believe this is an Armenism. Megrelian-Laz კალმახა (ǩalmaxa) could be borrowed from Georgian კალმახა (ḳalmaxa, “(small) trout”), which was mentioned by Saba, or they could've just added -a on their own. Ditto for Svan. As far as I can tell, no Kartvelist mentions this word: not Fahnrich, not Klimov, not Chikobava, not Chukhua. I don't understand why it's necessary to mention all POVs when most(?) people agree that Nostratic theory is dumb. If it were up to me I'd just delete everything and mark it as borrowed from Armenian. I will of course defer to more experienced users because I didn't read as many books as some of the people here. So you and the other user you pinged should decide what to do with this entry. :) კვარია (talk) 19:37, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

@კვარია: thanks, that is what I suspected. I also found a confirmation in Klimov.

The final -a may reflect Armenian karmraxayt. Mingrelian ḳaymaxa may preserve karmraxayt. The word was long and foreign, that's why it was mangled.

We have to mention silly theories and debunk them because some of your compatriots feel jealous about Armenian borrowings and grasp at straws trying to refute them. Vahag (talk) 16:54, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't have a horse in this race: I'm allergic to almost all seafoods. :p

WRT კაჲმახი (ḳaymaxi) this is an inner-Mingrelian thing. Compare ძალა (ʒala), ძაჲა (ʒaya); ძალამი (ʒalami), ძაჲამი (ʒayami), ძაამი (ʒaami), ძამი (ʒami); ალმასი (almasi), აჲმასი (aymasi). Kajaia almost never lists such lemmas together with more common pronunciations so I tend to forget about them. Even recently I added ლანჯი (lanǯi) and didn't add ჲანჯი (yanǯi), but if you look in Kajaia you'll also found ჲანჯი (yanǯi) separately where he'll tell you to look for ლანჯი (lanǯi) instead. კვარია (talk) 17:43, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

I see. Kajaia's dictionary is included in http://www.nplg.gov.ge/gwdict/index.php. That's how I found კაჲმახი. Vahag (talk) 18:23, 5 December 2021 (UTC)