ჟამი

In a letter from the respected batoni Levan Chkhaidze (one of the co-authors of that magical Chanturia dictionary and, in general, one of the brightest minds in Georgia), he reflects on the origin of the Megrelian word "zhami" (ჟამი, "time"), which is also claimed by the Armenians and, as it turns out, the Persians. At the end of the letter, Levan Levanovich asks my opinion on this issue. I start to answer, saying that I never believe in the direction of borrowing "from Persian to Georgian", that, they say, the Persians in the historical perspective are nobody compared to the Kartvelians (Herodotus being a witness to this)... And while my hands were typing, my head suddenly realized that the word "zhami" is perfectly decomposed into Megrelian morphemes, which clearly proves the Megrelian origin of the word:

zha + ami = zhami

"Zha" (ჟა) is one of the variants of the Megrelian ბჟა ("sun", we remember it from the story about the "lark"), and "-ami" is a signature Megrelian adjective suffix, which corresponds to the Georgian "-iani". Thus, "zhami" morphemewise means "sunny" and absolutely corresponds to the Georgian "mziani".

That is, "time" is something "sunny". And here my hair starts to shiver, because just yesterday morning I was telling a friend the difference between Present Continuous and Present Simple. I always tell at this point about the Indians, who have no concept of time, for whom what we imagine as a timeline tending toward death, in their philosophy is the present moment (Present Continuous), only stretched out to cover the whole life. It turns out to be the present tense, only now more like Present Simple. For example, "I speak English" includes not only the present moment, but also a large part of my past life. But we call it "present". And suddenly I formulated for myself literally: "for Indians, time is nothing more than the movement of the sun across the sky." And then a letter about "zhami" comes from Levan Chkhaidze... Such coincidences do not happen...