Georgian language: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Georgian (also Kartvelian; Kartuli in Georgian) is the official language of Georgia, a republic in the Caucasus. For the origin of the name, see the Georgia article.

Georgian is the primary language of 4,150,000 people in Georgia itself (90% of the population), and of another 2.5 million people abroad (chiefly in Turkey and Russia, with smaller communities in Iran and Azerbaijan). It is also the literary language for most ethnographic groups of Georgian people, especially those who speak other South Caucasian languages (Svans, Megrelians, and the Laz).

The language

Linguistic classification

Georgian is the most important of the South Caucasian languages, a family that also includes Svan and Megrelian (chiefly spoken in Northwest Georgia) and Laz (chiefly spoken along the Black Sea coast of Turkey, from Trabzon to the Georgian frontier).

Dialects

Dialects of Georgian include Imeretian, Racha-Lechkhum, Gurian, Ajarian, Imerxev (in Turkey), Kartlian, Kakhetian, Ingilo, Tush, Khevsur, Mokhev, Pshav, Mtiul, Ferjeidan (in Iran), Meskhetian.

History of the language

Georgian is believed to have separated from Megrelian and Laz in the third millennium BC. Based on the degree of change, linguists (e.g. G.Klimov, T.Gamkrelidze, G.Machavariani) conjecture that the earliest split occurred in the second millennium BC or earlier, separating Svan from the other languages. Megrelian and Laz separated from Georgian roughly a thousand years later.

Georgian has a very rich literary tradition. The oldest surviving literary text in Georgian is the "Martyrdom of Saint Shushaniki, of the Queen" (C'amebaj c'midisa Shushanik'isi, dedoplisa) by Iakob Tsurtaveli, from the 5th century AD.

Linguistic features

The language contains some formidable consonant clusters, as may be seen in words like gvprtskvni ("You peel us") and mtsvrtneli ("trainer"). Most Georgian surnames end in -dze ("son") (Western Georgia), -shvili ("child") (Eastern Georgia), -ia (Western Georgia), -ani (Western Georgia), -uri (Eastern Georgia), etc.

Georgian has a subject-verb-object primary sentence structure, and an ergative-like noun inflection (case) system.

(see Georgian alphabet)

Consonants

¹/q'/ has neither non-ejective nor voiced counterparts
²/l>/ is a velarized /l/

There are many consonant clusters in Georgian, while almost every word ends with a vowel.

Vowels

See also: Georgian in Iran