Ghām - sweaty and sunny
Story time! I was chatting with my gf on our way to a café today, it was damn hot outside (sunkis- sunbaked bhubaneswar :)), and she remarked something about "ghaam". Naturally, my Bengali brain thought she was talking about sweat and so I teased, “Do I look that sweaty?” But she just laughed and corrected me: “No, I meant it’s so sunny!” Apparently, ghām means sunshine in Nepali?!
It got me thinking, how, in related languages, the same root word can develop alternate meanings. In Bengali, it is ঘাম (ghām) which means “sweat”, that salty reminder of how hot it is out. In Nepali, however, it is घाम (ghām) which means sunlight, or even the sun. So I researched a bit more...
Both Bengali and Nepali terms ultimately derive from the Sanskrit घर्म (gharmá), which entered Prakrit as ghamma.
Lemme summarise for the language learners:
In Bengali:
The inherited term ঘাম (ghām, /ɡʱɑːm/) means “sweat.”
In Nepali:
The inherited term घाम (ghām, /ɡʱɑːm/) denotes “sunlight” or “the sun,” reflecting a symbolic association with warmth.
Alsooo, the Persian loanword গরম (gôrom, /ɡɔrɔm/), adapted from Persian گرم (garm), is used as an adjective meaning “hot.” in Bengali. And, Nepali uses गरम (garam, /ɡərəm/), that functions similarly to Bengali gôrom and Hindi गर्म. Fun part is, both the Sanskrit घर्म (gharmá) and Persian گرم (garm) trace back to the common Proto-Indo-Iranian root gʰarmás.
Here's a Nepali song to cool down in this hot weather (বাতাস hehe):