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The Origin of the world "Ghalcha"

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Afghanan View Drop Down
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  Quote Afghanan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: The Origin of the world "Ghalcha"
    Posted: 23-Sep-2009 at 17:05
In older historical texts, Tajiks in the Pamirs were mentioned as "Ghalcha Tajiks" (Pamiris).  Ghalcha is known to be related also to:  Ghalcha->Gharcha->Gharchistan.   The Pashtuns have a tribe known as the "Ghaljai" aka ancient Khalaj, and the Historic Khilji and Ghilzai.
 
Does Ghalcha have to do with "Mountains" (Ghar) or with something else?  Is it a Turkish word? (Qalcha)?
 
 
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  Quote Cyrus Shahmiri Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Sep-2009 at 00:27
The word totally seems to be Turkish or Turkified, the second part of the word is similar to suffix "-chai" which can be seen in several palce names of Azerbaijan like Turkmen-chai, Aji-chai, Aq-chai, Ghuri-chai, ... I think chai means "river".
 
The first part sounds Turkish too, however there is "gh" (غ) sound in Iranian languages, unlike "q" (ق) which is pronounced as hard "gh", but there is not many Iranian origin words with this sound, especially at the beginning of the word.
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  Quote Zomaan Shilogh Dyak Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Sep-2009 at 10:48

I think either Robertson or Biddulph mentions that it is a Turkic term.

Linguistically the Ghalcha languages have some Turkic influence, but as far as race is concerned the Wakhi, Shughni and Sarikolis appear to have more Turkic(Altaic) blood than Aryan.
 
 
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  Quote Afghanan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Sep-2009 at 17:59
If Cha is a suffix then "Ghal" or "Qal" must mean something as well.  I found a book through Google books which has different theories regarding the term "Ghalcha"  

It mentions (footnotes removed):  

"Often, the Pamiris were also designated as Galtscha (Galcha, Galtscha)....Whether a region or a population is meant remains unclear...Shaw, in his article 'On the Galchah Languages', also believes that the word 'Galtscha', as used by the Turkish-speaking neighbors living around them, was a term in their language that described the Pamiris...More convincing is the origin given by Tomaschek, who disagrees with meanings such as 'small person' (from the Turkish "ghalcha") or a designation of a population based on the words 'rough', 'common' or 'uncultured', and instead bases himself on the local designation of 'mountains' (gairi, ghar, or gor)...Galtsha would then designate an inhabitant of the highlands, a meaning found also in the above-mentioned designation as 'mountain Tajik'."

Source:  

Social and economic change in the Pamirs (Gorno-Badakhshan, Tajikistan)

 By Frank Bliss

----

Interestlingly, the Ghaljai Afghans were associated by ancient Muslim scholars with the land of Tokharistan and east of Tokharistan,  the exact region where the ancient Hephtalites inhabited.  This is important in this discussion because the Hephtalites (aka White Huns)  were theorized to have come from the Pamirs as well.  Ancient scholars also called the White Huns as the "Ko-cheh"  which bares stark resemblance to the Afghan "Kochei/Kochai".  Kazuo Enoki wrote

"Let me recapitulate the foregoing. The grounds upon which the White Huns are assigned an Iranian tribe are : (1) that their original home was on the east frontier of Tokharestan ; and (2) that their culture contained some Iranian elements. Naturally, the White Huns were sometimes regarded as another branch of the Kao-ch’e tribe by their contemporaries, and their manners and customs are represented as identical with those of the T’u-chueh, and it is a fact that they had several cultural elements in common with those of the nomadic Turkish tribes. Nevertheless, such similarity of manners and customs is an inevitable phenomenon arising from similarity of their environments. The White Huns could not be assigned as a Turkish tribe on account of this. The White Huns were considered by some scholars as an Aryanized tribe, but I would like to go further and acknowledge them as an Iranian tribe. Though my grounds, as stated above, are rather scarce, it is expected that the historical and linguistic materials concerning the White Huns are to be increased in the future and most of the newly-discovered materials seem to confirm my Iranian-tribe theory." 



















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  Quote Afghanan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Sep-2009 at 18:17
Originally posted by Cyrus Shahmiri

The word totally seems to be Turkish or Turkified, the second part of the word is similar to suffix "-chai" which can be seen in several palce names of Azerbaijan like Turkmen-chai, Aji-chai, Aq-chai, Ghuri-chai, ... I think chai means "river".
 
The first part sounds Turkish too, however there is "gh" (غ) sound in Iranian languages, unlike "q" (ق) which is pronounced as hard "gh", but there is not many Iranian origin words with this sound, especially at the beginning of the word.

Since most indigenous people of the Pamirs are Iranic speakers, it would make sense that Ghalcha is a Turkified form of Ghar. Just southwest of the Pamirs lays the region known as "Gharchistan," which is close to a province known as "Ghor", whose original inhabitants were a warlike Iranic tribe as well.


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  Quote Cyrus Shahmiri Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Sep-2009 at 13:39
Of course Ghalcha could be an Iranian origin word too, that is similar to very Persian word "Ghuncha" which means "bud", the second part could be the diminutive suffix "-cha" which can seen in numerous Persian words, like Baghcha (little garden), Kulucha (cookie), Mahicha (muscle), ... but I still think a word with two sounds of "gh" and "l" which are rarely used in Iranian origin words, is either Turkish, Turkified or from other non-Iranian languages of the region.
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  Quote Afghanan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21-Apr-2010 at 09:36
Well they may be rare in Western Iranian, but the presence of "L" in many Pashto words is common, which is a Southeastern Iranian thing (retroflex consonants), as well as the presence of 'gh' in the language.  

For instance: "Gharzai"  , "Ghorghukht/Ghorghusht"  "Ghonda" , "Da'gha" (pronoun)",  "Ghara" (neck), " Ghata (big)" to name a few.  

In Persian for instance, Pidar/Padar and in Pashto: "Pilar" .  Didar in persian to Pashto, "Lidal".  Dast (Persian, in Pashto, it is "Las."  etc, etc.  


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