Georgian

Georgian (kartuli ena, ქართული ენა), also known as Kartvelian or Kartuli, is a member of the Kartvelian family, one of the Caucasian language families, along with Svan, Laz, and Mingrelian. It is believed that Svan separated from the other languages in the second millennium BC. A thousand years later, Georgian separated from Laz and Mingrelian. The four are now considered to be separate languages.

The name Georgian used in the European languages was coined during the Crusades; it is based on Persian gorji ‘Georgian’, from which the Russian term gruzin ‘Georgian’ was also derived.

 

Status

Georgian is spoken by 3.9 million people who live mainly in the Republic of Georgia where it is the official language. Georgian speakers also live in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan (Ethnologue). In Georgia, most newspapers and journals are published in Georgian. Radio Tbilisi broadcasts in Georgian and several other languages, while Tbilisi Television broadcasts in Georgian and Russian.

 

Dialects

According to Ethnologue, there are several varieties of Georgian (some of which may be endangered). They are believed to be mutually intelligible. The proliferation of dialects is due to the mountainous character of the country with many small isolated communities.

• Adzhar (Acharian)
• Ferejdan
• Gurian
• Imeretian
• Imerxev Kartlian
• Ingilo
• Kaxetian (Kakhetian)
• Meskhur-Javakhuri
• Moxev (Mokhev)
• Mtiul
• Pshav
• Racha-Lexchxum (Lechkhum)
• Tush
• Xevsur (Kheysur)
• Moxev (Mokhev), Pshav
• Mtiul

 

Structure

 

Sound system

The sound system of Georgian is characterized by a rich inventory of consonants and by long consonant clusters, especially at the beginning of words. The language allows up to six consonants in the beginning of words, e.g., tkven ‘you’, zghva ‘sea‘, mtsrtneli ‘trainer’.

 

Vowels

Georgian has five cardinal vowels which are given below.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e		o
Open		a

 

Consonants

Georgian has 28 consonants.

		Labial	Labio-dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops	voiceless aspirated	p	x	t	xx	k
	voiceless ejective	p’		t’		k’	q’
	voiced	b		d		g
Fricatives	voiceless			s	ʃ	x		h
	voiced		v	z	ʒ	ɣ
Affricates	voiceless aspirated			ts	tʃ
	voiceless ejective			ts’	tʃ’
	voiced			dz	dʒ
Nasals		m	x	n	xxx
Lateral			x	l	xxx
Trill			x	r

• /p’, t’, k’, q’, ts’,tʃ’/ are ejective consonants made with the air pushed out by the vocal cords instead of the lungs so that the sounds appear to be spat out
• /q’/ has no equivalent in English.
• /x, ɣ/ have no equivalents in English
• /ʃ/ = sh in shop
• /ʒ/ = s in vision
• /tʃ// = ch in chop
• /dʒ/ = j in jet

 

Grammar

Georgian is an agglutinative language, i.e., one in which each affix typically represents one grammatical function such as ‘past tense’, ‘plural’, or ‘masculine’. These affixes do not become fused with each other like they do in European languages (e.g., –s in sings represents 2nd person + singular). They are simply added to each other in a string. This may occasionally result in long words which correspond to phrases and even whole sentences in European languages. Georgian uses postpositions rather than prepositions to mark grammatical relations.

 

Nouns and pronouns

• Nouns are not marked for gender.
• There is no definite or indefinite article.
• There are two numbers: singular and plural.
• There are seven cases: nominative, ergative, accusative, dative, genitive, instrumental, adverbial, and vocative.
• Pronouns are marked for case and number.

 

Verbs

Georgian verbs are very complex. Below is a short list of their major traits.

• They tend to be long due to agglutination.
• They can include reference to the subject and the direct and indirect objects, e.g.,’ I gave it to him’ is one word in Georgian, a phenomenon known as polypersonalism.
• Verbs are usually analyzed in series, called screeves, each of which represents tense (present, past, future), aspect (imperfective and perfective) and mood (indicative, conditional and subjunctive).
• There are four classes of verbs. Each class has its own set of conjugation rules for all screeves.
• There is a large number of irregular verbs.
• There is a distinction between stative and motion verbs; the later are precisely defined through the use of directional prefixes.

 

Word order

The normal word order in Georgian is Subject-Object-Verb, but the order can vary, depending on contextual factors.

 

Vocabulary

Georgian has a rich vocabulary that can accommodate a variety of functions and genres, from poetry to science. Throughout history, it has borrowed words from languages with which it came into contact. As a result, it contains loanwords from Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, e.g., khalkhi ‘people’ from Arabic khalq, Turkish halk. Georgian has also borrowed from European languages, especially Russian, e.g., gazeti ‘newspaper’ from Russian gazeta ‘newspaper’.

Below are some common Georgian words and phrases, presented in romanization.

Hello	Gamarjoba
Goodbye	Nakhvamdis
Sorry, I am sorry	Bodishi
Excuse me	Uk’atsravad
Thank you	Gmadlobt
Please	Ttu sheidzleba
Yes	Diakh (formal), k’i (neutral)
No	Ara

 

 

 

Below are Georgian numerals 1-10 in romanization.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
erti	ori	sami	otxi	xuti	ekvsi	shvidi	rva	cxra	ati

 

Writing

Georgian has a very rich and ancient literary tradition. The oldest surviving literary text in Georgian is the Martyrdom of Saint Shushaniki, the Queen by Iakob Tsurtaveli dating back to the 5th century AD. This tradition has continued uninterrupted until today. Georgian is also the liturgical language for all members of the Georgian Orthodox church and the literary language for speakers of Svan, Laz, and Mingrelian.

It is believed that the Old Georgian script was developed from the Greek alphabet following the country’s conversion to Christianity in 337 AD. From the 5th to the 11th centuries, an alphabet named khutsuri ‘ecclesiastical’ was used. Since then, an alphabet called mkhedruli ‘military’ has been in use. The modern Georgian writing system uses a round-form cursive script and does not distinguish between upper and lower case letters. It contains 33 symbols with each letter corresponding to a unique phoneme and each phoneme being represented by only one letter. The alphabet is given below.

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Georgian script and in transliteration. The script uses numerous ligatures which makes reading it relatively difficult.

მუხლი 1. ყველა ადამიანი იბადება თავისუფალი და თანასწორი თავისი ღირსებითა და უფლებებით. მათ მინიჭებული აქვთ გონება და სინდისი და ერთმანეთის მიმართ უნდა იქცეოდნენ ძმობის სულისკვეთებით.

Qvela adamiani ibadeba t’avisup’ali dat’anascori tavisi g’irsebit’a da uplebebit’. Mat minicebuli ak’vt’ goneba da sindisi da ert’manet’is mimart’ unda ik’c’eodnen zmobis suliskvet’ebit’.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

 

Did You Know?

Joseph Stalin was a native speaker of Georgian. He was born Ioseb Dzhugashvili in 1879 in the town of Gori, Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire. He learned Russian as a second language and spoke it with a strong accent throughout his life.

 

Difficulty