Gulboto

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1. Hello. I hope you are doing great!

   I have a correction for this article.

   Firstly it’s from Tajikistan, and we have several names for it here depending on the region.

   It is pronounced and spelled Gulbutta, Gul or Гӯл meaning clay, and Butta or Бута meaning ceramic.
   In my region we also call it Loyqand or Лойқанд. Loy being clay “Khujandi dialect” and Qand meaning candy. Fun fact is that candy comes from the Sanskrit word, but it went thru Persian/Tajik before arriving to Europe!

   Secondly, Gulbutta comes from a village called, you guessed it Gulbutta! Tho this one means flower bush in Tajik, even tho it’s the same spelling. The reason for that is because it’s pronounced differently but English/Russian can’t capture the sound onto text properly.
   https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Гулбутта

   Thirdly, while there are sweet versions of Gulbutta, they are actually very salty. If it is sweet that means they put it in sugary water among others.

   By the way Gulubutta was used in diarrhoea medicines!
   I believe that USA had something called Kaopectate, which was made from clay and pectin. We do the same but natively. We mix clay with apples and cherries if we had a terrible stomach pain since forever. I’m 22 and last time I ate it was like few years ago so this is a still culturally existent medicine that seems to be not featured in English media!

   Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan also have this, and I have seen them in bazaars. But they call it clay, and they don’t understand the meaning of the word, because they don’t understand Persian etymology. And I think the reason why it showed up onto Turkic lands is either that Tajik, or back then Sogdian and Bactrian merchants would sell it to Turkic nomads, or it was distributed during the Soviet Union and they found their version of Gulbutta!

   Thank you very much for your attention, and I hope I don’t have any grammatical mistakes:)

   Sincerely
   Shahzod Jamolidinov

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