Talk:ფოთოლი

πέταλον

@Vahagn_Petrosyan, კვარია: Is it borrowing? ɶLerman (talk) 00:12, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

@ɶLerman: The word is only attested since Middle Georgian. It doesn't have good cognates in other Kartvelian languages. Č̣ḳadua connected the Georgian word with Svan ფოშდელ (pošdel, “Festuca”), which was accepted by some Kartvelologists but I personally don't like that etymology. Greek connection looks good, but the vowel correspondences don't really make sense. კვარია (talk) 05:13, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

@ɶLerman Greek etymologies of Georgian words should be approached sceptically. Georgians have not interacted with Greeks as much as they like to imagine. There are certainly technical, learned loanwords into the literary language. There are also popular loanwords into Laz from Pontic Greek. But I have yet to see a popular direct borrowing of a basic Greek word into oral Georgian. The wide dialectal distribution of ფოთოლი (potoli) proves that it is a popular word, not a learned borrowing. It is also a very basic word, "leaf". So, leaving aside the phonetic difficulties (wrong vowels, aspirated consonants) a Greek origin is very unlikely. The descendant of πέταλον in Georgian is the regular Old Georgian პეტალოჲ (ṗeṭaloy, “thin plate of metal”), a technical term.

ფოთოლი (potoli, “leaf”) and its various forms remind me of Armenian փաթիլ (pʻatʻil, “snowflake, tuft”) and փետուր (pʻetur, “feather”) with their various forms, all referring to light, flying objects, and probably being sound-symbolic formations. Vahag (talk) 10:54, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, it's interesting. ɶLerman (talk) 01:02, 26 November 2024 (UTC)