Georgian language

Georgian (ქართული ენა, kartuli ena) is the official language of Georgia. Outside this country, it is spoken mainly in Turkey and Russia, with smaller communities in neighboring Azerbaijan, other former Soviet republics, and Iran, totaling 4,240,000 the people who speak this language. In addition, it is the main written language for all Georgian ethnic groups, including the speakers of the other Kartvelian languages such as Svano, Megrelian and Laz.

Georgian uses a unique writing system, known as the Georgian alphabet, which has evolved through history into three different forms, called asomtavruli, nusjuri, and mjedruli.

Geographic distribution

Georgian is the mother tongue of almost four million Georgians, about 70% of Georgia's population. In Russia 171,000 people speak Georgian and about 40,000 in Turkey (1983), while in Iran there may be between 1,000 and 10,000 who use this language.

In other former Soviet republics, Georgian is used by 34,200 people in Ukraine, 16,300 people in Azerbaijan, 7,700 in Kazakhstan, and 4,100 in Uzbekistan. Armenia and Turkmenistan also have small Georgian-speaking communities.

Historical, social and cultural aspects

History

Georgian is thought to have diverged from Mingrelian and Laz around 3,000 years ago. Based on the degree of the change, some linguists such as Georgy Klimov, T. Gamkrelidze and G. Machavariani raised the possibility that the start of the change had already occurred in the second millennium BC. C. or earlier, differentiating Svan from other languages. The Mingrelian and Laz languages would diverge from Georgian roughly a millennium later.

Registration in Georgian in Bolnisi Sioni, 494 AD.

The earliest allusion to spoken Georgian may be a passage by the Roman grammarian Marcus Cornelius Fronton in the II century: Fronton imagine the Iberians (Georgians) addressing Emperor Marcus Aurelius in their incomprehensible language.

The evolution of Georgian into a written language was a consequence of the conversion of the Georgian elite to Christianity in the mid-IV century. The new literary language built on an already well-established cultural infrastructure, appropriating the functions, conventions, and status of Aramaic, the literary language of pagan Georgia, and the new national religion. The earliest Georgian texts are inscriptions and palimpsests dated to the 5th century century. The oldest Georgian inscription, dating to about 430, was discovered in the 1950s during excavations of a Georgian monastery in the Judean desert. Within Georgia, the oldest inscription (year 494) is found in a church in Bolnisi.

The first Georgian dictionary appeared in 1716, produced by Sulkhan Saba Orbeliani, while the first native grammar was produced by Zurab Shanshovani in 1737. As early as the XX (1950-1964), the Georgian Academy undertook the writing of the eight volumes that make up the Explanatory Dictionary of the Georgian language (ქართული ენის ენის განმარტებითი).

Literature

Georgian has a prolific literary tradition. The oldest written text in Georgiano that is still preserved is the martyrdom of Queen Santa Shushanik (წამებაჲ წმიდისა შუშანიკისი დედოფლისაჲ, c ' AMEBAJ C ' MIDISA SHUSHANIK ' ISI dedoplisaj) written by Iakob Tsurtaveli between 476 and 483. The first dated manuscript of the Gospels is the Adysh Manuscript (897). During the "golden age" of Georgia - the reign of Queen Tamar (1184-1213) - the epic national poem The Knight in the Tiger Skin was composed, considered the magnum opus of Georgian literature. this language.

Dialects

There are at least eighteen dialects of Georgian, all of which still retain unique features in terms of phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary, although they are virtually entirely mutually intelligible. In contrast, the other Kartvelian languages—Mingrelian, Svano, and Laz — are only partially intelligible to speakers of standard Georgian or of the various Georgian dialects.

Among the Georgian dialects that exist in Georgia, in the western part of the country, along the Black Sea coast, Gurian — south of Mingrelia — and Adzharan or Ach'aran are used. To the interior they limit with the imiretiano. To the north of the latter, the northwestern dialects are located: lechjumiano and to the east the rach'an. Among the northern dialects, Mojevian approaches the southern foothills of the Caucasus while Mtiuletian is spoken immediately to the south. Among the northeastern dialects, the Jevsurian stands out —in the area to the east of the Mokevian—, the Pshavian and, isolated in the mountains that separate Chechnya from Dagestan, the Tush. K'akhetian is the eastern dialect, while in the extensive central region, the dialect used is Kartlian, the basis of the modern literary language. Southern dialects include Dzhavajian—southwestern Kartlian—and Mesjian.

Other Georgian dialects can be found outside of Georgia such as Ingiloan, spoken in the Azeri region of Katala, Imerjevian, spoken in eastern Turkey, and Fereydanian, a dialect used in Fereydan (Iran). Another dialect form known as Qizlar-Mozdokian, now in disuse, was spoken in the North Caucasus as a result of emigrants from eastern Georgia who settled there in the XVIII.

Lastly, Judeo-Georgian, the language spoken by the Jews of Georgia, is not considered by some authors to be a separate language, but only a dialect of Georgian. To a large extent it shares phonetics, morphology and syntax with Georgian, although it contains words of Hebrew and Aramaic origin.

Influence of other languages

Georgian has linguistic traits from all the empires that have been present in the Caucasus. It has Greco-Roman, Persian, Arab, Turkish and Russian elements, being those of Persian and Russian origin the most significant. Elements from the other side of the Caucasus have also been identified, such as muxa(j), "oak", of Naj (Dagestan) origin.

Alphabet

The modern Georgian alphabet has 33 letters. Although initially it consisted of 38, some letters have become obsolete.

Manuscript in Nusjuri (sighs) XIII-XIV)

History of the Alphabet

The oldest form of the Georgian alphabet, the asomtavruli ("capital letters") alphabet, was created in 412 BC. C. by Georgian priests of the cult of Matra (Mithra of Persia). The asomtavruli alphabet underwent reforms in 284 BC. C. made by King Parnavaz I of Iberia.

The asomtavruli alphabet is also known as mrgvlovani ("rounded"). Samples of this alphabet are still preserved today in monumental inscriptions, such as those found in the Georgian church of Bolnisi Sioni near Tbilisi (from the centuries IV or V). Even older samples were found, dating to the III century BCE. C. to III d. C., in Armaztsikhe (near Mtskheta) and Nekresi (in the Kakheti region of eastern Georgia), in 1940 and from 1995 to 2003 scientific expeditions conducted by Simon Janashia (1900-1947) and Levan Chilashvili. The inscriptions of the Armaztsikhe were studied by Pavle Ingorokva.

The alphabet nusjuri ("lowercase") or kutjovani ("gridded") first appeared in the IX. Asomtavruli and nusjuri, known as jutsuri (ხუცური, or "church script"), were used to write religious manuscripts, using asomtavruli to write the capital letters

The modern alphabet, called mjedruli (მხედრული, “secular” or “gentlemen's script”), first appeared in the 17th century X. It was used for non-religious purposes until the 18th century, when it completely replaced the khutsuri. Georgian linguists classify its spelling as phonemic.

Linguistic description

Classification

Ethno-linguistic groups in the Caucasus region. The Georgian in orange, downtown.

Georgian is the most widely spoken of the South Caucasian or Kartvelian languages, a family that also includes Svanan and Megrelian (spoken mainly in northwestern Georgia) as well as Laz (spoken along the sea coast Turkey Negro, from Trabzon to the Georgian border). Georgians call themselves kartv-el-i, hence the designation used to refer to the language family and to allude to the ethnic groups that speak one of these languages.

Phonology

Consonants

Where there are three consonants at the same point of articulation, the order is: voiced, voiceless aspirated, voiceless ejective; where there are two (except l, r) the order is: lateral, vibrant.

Note that in Georgian there are similar sounds that are phonemically different:

• ♫, kh (sighs) and , (k) (eyective)
• 日本語, th (sighs) and , t. (eyective)
• , ph (sighs) and , p. (eyective)
• , h (sighs) and , ʼ (eyective)
• , h (sighs) and , ʼ (eyective)

Vocals

Grammar

Modern Georgian has 5 vowels and 28 consonants, while Old Georgian had the same vowels but 30 consonants. In the consonant system, stops and affricates are voiced, voiceless, and glottalized. Although most word roots begin with one or two consonants, there are many words with clusters of consonants in initial position; some of these clusters may consist of up to six consonants, as in the voice prckvna, "peeling".

The stress stress is placed on the first syllable in two-syllable words but in longer words it tends to fall on the first or third to last syllable.

The order of the words is relatively free, being able to be subject-verb-object, subject-object-verb or object-subject-verb. There is no grammatical gender; if there is a need to distinguish between the sexes there are defined terms that can be added. The marker for the plural is formed with the suffix -eb- after the stem. On the other hand, there is no definite article. The numeral ert, «one», can be used as an indefinite article.

Georgian is an agglutinative language in which certain prefixes and suffixes are joined together in order to make a verb. In some cases, there can be up to eight different morphemes in a verb simultaneously: for example, in ageshenebinat, "you have built", the verb can be subdivided as a-g-e-shen-eb-in -a-t, where each morpheme contributes to the meaning of the tense or the person performing the action. Verb conjugation also exhibits polypersonalism; a verb can include morphemes that allude to both the subject and the object.

As for the verbal system, it is extremely complex, differentiating between static or dynamic verbs, and transitive or intransitive, including passive and medium verbs in this last category.

A notable feature of Georgian, which it shares with the other Kartvelian languages, is the ergative sentence construction. The subject of a transitive verb is marked by a special, ergative, case, while the direct object case is the same as that of the subject in intransitive verbs: kac-i (nominative) midis, "the man goes", but kac-ma (ergative) molda datv-i (nominative), "the man killed the bear".

Georgian has seven grammatical cases: nominative, ergative, dative, genitive, instrumental, vocative, and adverbial.

Vocabulary

Georgian has a rich system of derived words. From a root, the addition of certain prefixes and suffixes allows obtaining various related nouns and adjectives. For example, starting from the root -kartv-, one can derive the terms Kartveli, “person from Georgia”, Kart uli, “Georgian language” and Sakartvelo, “Georgia”.

Most Georgian surnames end in -dze, "son" (western Georgia), -shvili, "boy" (eastern Georgia), -ia (western Georgia, Samegrelo), -ani (western Georgia, Svaneti) or -uri (eastern Georgia). The particle -eli at the end indicates nobility, equivalent to French de or German von.

Georgian, like Basque or French, has a vigesimal number system, based on a number system of 20. To express a number greater than 20 and less than 100, first state the number as a multiple of twenty and then add the remaining number. Thus, 93 is expressed as ოთხმოცდაცამეტი - otkh-m-ots-da-tsamet'i (lit. four times twenty and thirteen).

Useful expressions in Georgian

Between parentheses the approximate Spanish pronunciation. (kh is pronounced like J in Spanish, dzh is pronounced like J in English)

• (gamaryoba) – Hello
• )。)。)。)。)。)。))。)。)。)。)。)。))。)。)。)。)。))。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。))。 。)。)。)。 。 。 。)。)。)。)。)。 s。 s。 s。)。)。)。)。 s。 。 s。 s。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 s。 。 s。 s。 s。)。 s。 s。 s。 。 s。 s。 s。 s。 s。 s。 s。 。)。 s。 s。 s。)。 s
• How are you?
• (najvamdis) – See you later
• (gmadlob) – Thank you
• )の)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。
• ) crowd – (gtjov) – Please
• )の) (bodishi) – Sorry
• –の)。)の。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。 。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)
• ) ქ ქ ქ 。))。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。))) 。))) 。)) 。)) 。 。) 。) 。) 。 。 。)) 。 。 。) 。 。 。)) 。 。 。 。 。) 。) 。 。)))) 。) 。 。 。 。) 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。) 。 。 。 。 。)) 。 。)))) 。 。 。 。))))) 。 。) 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。)))
• (ra gkvia shen) – What's your name?
• ))))。))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))。)))))))))))。)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
• )))。))。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。)。 。)。)。)。 。)。 。)。 。 。)。)。)。 。 。 。)。 。 。)。)。 。)。 。 。)。)。)。)。 。)。 。)。 。 。)。 。 。)。 。 。)。 。)。 。 。)。 。 。)。 。)。)。 。)。 。)。)。)。 。)。)。 。)。)。)。)。)。)
• (gaumaryos!) – Chinchín! Cheers!
• )の) (guilotsav) – Congratulations, Congratulations