Talk:гаа

Tibetan

Hey @Metaknowledge, could you find if the word exists? Sukhebaatar can be unreliable and THL doesn't seem to have it. Crom daba (talk) 21:02, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

The same goes for юмдүүжин. Crom daba (talk) 21:03, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't know about existence; I don't have any physical dictionaries at the moment, so I was just transliterating. @Wyang is the person to ask. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:30, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

@Crom daba, Metaknowledge

• I can't verify ska. Perhaps Sukhebaatar meant ག་བུར (ga bur) (Lhasa: /kʰə˩˧.puː˥˥/), ག་པུར (ga pur), ག་ཕུར (ga phur), ཀ་ཏ་པུར (ka ta pur) (Lhasa: /ka˥˥.ta˥˥.puː(ɹ)˥˥/), etc., all meaning “camphor”, from Sanskrit कर्पूर (karpūra) (some of these may be via Arabic كَافُور (kāfūr)) and hence cognate with English camphor.
• For the other one, yu mo mde' 'byin cannot be found, but there is ཡུ་མོ་མདེའུ་འབྱིན (yu mo mde'u 'byin, “Paraquilegia microphylla”) which looks somewhat close to Dianthus superbus. Somewhat. Wyang (talk) 13:32, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

I doubt the first etymology, I'll look around for more info, but neither ska nor ga bur are satisfying.

The second etymology is surely correct, the missing u is even present in the Mongol script spelling given by Sukhebaatar. Perhaps the translation is mistaken though. Crom daba (talk) 14:44, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

No luck, this seems to be Khalkha exclusive, also it might be closer to menthol or maybe peppermint rather than mint. Crom daba (talk) 15:46, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Found it, it's ལྒ. Crom daba (talk) 16:55, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

If this is mint < ginger, སྒ (sga) is more likely - it is the usual Tibetan word for ginger. It's also more consistent with Sukhebaatar. The semantic association is not very apparent to me, though (conflation of etymologies?). Wyang (talk) 00:26, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, སྒ (sga) is probably better, I got ལྒ (lga) from Ramstedt (turns out it's not quite Khalkha exclusive) on Kalmyk һааҗ (ğaaj) (from སྒ་སྐྱ (sga skya) it turns out).

The plant as defined by Sukhebaatar is most certainly not mint and is probably ginger or at least Zingiber (rhizomic, yellowish, poignant taste, ...), but I'm not sure if the word is actually ever used unqualified to refer to a specific plant, we have white гаа which is ginger, red гаа which seems to be galangal, I've seen mint referred to as батраш гаа, lots of other gaa which are considered a type of имбирь Bolor suggests translations of several -mint words with гаа, at the same time it also means menthol, mentholated when referring to cigarettes or those inhaler things. Crom daba (talk) 11:25, 9 August 2017 (UTC)