Georgian (, ) is the most widely spoken Kartvelian language. It is the official language of Georgia and the native or primary language of 88% of its population. It also serves as the literary language or lingua franca for speakers of related languages. Its speakers amount to approximately 3.8 million. Georgian is written with its own unique Georgian scripts, alphabetical systems of unclear origin.
Georgian is not related to any of the world's major language families found outside of Georgia. It is most closely connected to other regional languages of Georgia, such as Mingrelian and, more distantly, Svan. Georgian has various dialects, with standard Georgian based on the Kartlian dialect, and all dialects are mutually intelligible. The history of Georgian spans from Early Old Georgian in the 5th century, to Modern Georgian. Its development as a written language began with the Christianization of Georgia in the 4th century.
Georgian phonology features a rich consonant system, including aspirated, voiced, and ejective stops, affricates, and fricatives. Its vowel system consists of five vowels with varying realizations. Georgian prosody involves weak stress, with disagreements among linguists on its placement. The language's phonotactics include complex consonant clusters and harmonic clusters. The Mkhedruli script, dominant in modern usage, corresponds closely to Georgian phonemes and has no case distinction, though it employs a capital-like effect called Mtavruli for titles and inscriptions. Georgian is an agglutinative language with a complex verb structure that can include up to eight morphemes, exhibiting polypersonalism. The language has seven noun cases and employs a left-branching structure with adjectives preceding nouns and postpositions instead of prepositions. Georgian lacks grammatical gender and articles, with definite meanings established through context. Georgian's rich derivation system allows for extensive noun and verb formation from roots, with many words featuring initial consonant clusters.
The Georgian writing system has evolved from ancient scripts into Mkhedruli, used for most purposes. The language has a robust grammatical framework with distinctive features such as syncope in morphophonology and a left-branching syntax. Georgian's vocabulary is highly derivational, allowing for diverse word formations, while its numeric system is vigesimal, based on 20, as opposed to a base 10 (decimal) system.
Classification No claimed genetic links between the Kartvelian languages and any other language family in the world are accepted in mainstream linguistics. Among the Kartvelian languages, Georgian is most closely related to the so-called Zan languages (Mingrelian and Laz); glottochronological studies indicate that it split from the latter approximately 2,700 years ago. Svan is a more distant relative that split off much earlier, perhaps 4,000 years ago.
Dialects
The Georgian language has at least 18 dialects, with Standard Georgian being largely based on the Kartlian dialect. Over the centuries, it has exerted a strong influence on the other dialects. As a result, they are all, generally, mutually intelligible with standard Georgian, and with one another.
History
The history of the Georgian language is conventionally divided into the following phases:
Early Old Georgian: 5th–8th centuries Classical Old Georgian: 9th–11th centuries Middle Georgian: 11th/12th–17th/18th centuries Modern Georgian: 17th/18th century–present
The earliest extant references to Georgian are found in the writings of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, a Roman grammarian from the 2nd century AD. The first direct attestations of the language are inscriptions and palimpsests dating to the 5th century, and the oldest surviving literary work is the 5th-century Martyrdom of the Holy Queen Shushanik by Iakob Tsurtaveli.
The emergence of Georgian as a written language appears to have been the result of the Christianization of the Kingdom of Iberia in the mid-4th century, which led to the replacement of Aramaic as the literary language.
By the 11th century, Old Georgian had developed into Middle Georgian. The most famous work of this period is the epic poem The Knight in the Panther's Skin, written by Shota Rustaveli in the 12th century.
In 1629, Nikoloz Cholokashvili authored the first printed books written (partially) in Georgian, the Alphabetum Ibericum sive Georgianum cum Oratione and the Dittionario giorgiano e italiano. These were meant to help western Catholic missionaries learn Georgian for evangelical purposes.
Phonology
Consonants Georgian has a large consonant inventory, like most languages of the Caucasus. It contrasts fully voiced, aspirated and ejective stops and affricates. Fricatives occur in five places of articulation (six if the uvular [χʼ] as an allophone of /qʼ/ is counted), with voicing contrast for dental (/s z/), post-alveolar (/ʃ ʒ/) and velar fricatives (/x ɣ/). Notably missing as a phoneme is the voiceless labio-dental, namely /f/, to contrast with /v/. The glottal fricative /h/ is marginal, occurring in very few words in the modern language.
The table below contains consonant phonemes in Georgian. On the left are IPA symbols, and on the right are the corresponding letters of the modern Georgian alphabet.
+Consonants Labial Dental/Alveolar Post-alveolar Velar Uvular Glottal Nasal Stop aspirated voiced 7, 8, 10 7, 8, 10 7, 8, 10 ejective 3 Affricate (aspirated) 1 1 voiced ejective Fricative voiceless 2 voiced 6 2 Vibrant 4,9 Lateral 5
Opinions differ on the aspiration of .Vicenik, Chad (2010). "An Acoustic Study of Georgian Stop Consonants". Journal of the International Phonetic Association 40 (1): 59–92. Opinions differ on how to classify and ; classifies them as post-velar, argues that they range from velar to uvular /χ ʁ/ according to context. The uvular ejective stop is commonly realized as a uvular ejective fricative but it can also be , , or ; they are in free variation. is realized as an alveolar tap though occurs in free variation. is pronounced as a velarized before back vowels; it is pronounced as in the environment of front vowels. is realized in most contexts as a bilabial fricative or , but has the following allophones. before voiceless consonants, it is realized as or . after voiceless consonants it is also voiceless and has been interpreted either as labialization of the preceding consonant or simply as . whether it is realized as labialization after voiced consonants is debated. word-initially before the vowel /u/ and sometimes before other consonants it may be deleted entirely. In initial positions, are pronounced as a weakly voiced . In word-final positions, may be devoiced and aspirated to . /r/ may be dropped in CrC contexts in colloquial speech. Word-final /b, d, ɡ/ may be realized as unreleased stops [b̚, d̚, ɡ̚] before another obstruent at word boundaries.
Old Georgian uvular () has merged with velar () in the modern language as /x/.
The coronal occlusives (, not necessarily affricates) are variously described as apical dental, laminal alveolar, and "dental".
Ejectives and glottalization
The glottalization of Georgian ejectives is phonetically subtle. A study of the properties of Georgian stops and ejectives found that bursts in ejective consonants are virtually identical to those of pulmonic stops, with voice onset time and voicing perhaps being more relevant as cues to the different consonant types than a stronger "popping" sound associated with stop burst releases.
Vicenik also observed that Georgian vowels following ejective stops have creaky voice and suggests this may be one other perceptual cue distinguishing ejectives from their aspirated and voiced counterparts.
Vowels + Vowel phonemes FrontCentral Back Close Mid Open Per Canepari, the main realizations of the vowels are [], [], [], [], [].
Aronson describes their realizations as [], [], [] (but "slightly fronted"), [], [].
Shosted transcribed one speaker's pronunciation more-or-less consistently with [], [], [], [], [].
Allophonically, [] may be inserted to break up consonant clusters, as in .
In casual speech, /i/ preceded or followed by a vowel may be realized as []~[]. similarly, /u/ and /o/ before a vowel may be realized as [w].
Phrase-final unstressed vowels are sometimes partially reduced.
Sequences /aa ii ee oo uu/ occurring at word and morpheme boundaries may be realized as single long vowels [äː iː e̞ː o̞ː uː], as in /kʼibeebi/ [ˈkʼibe̞ːbi] ("stairs").
Phonotactics Georgian syllable structure is notable due to its frequent consonant clusters, many of which fail to conform to the sonority sequencing principle. Clusters are especially common in onset position, where three-consonant sequences often occur even in basic vocabulary. In coda position, sequences of more than two are much rarer, especially word-finally. Clusters of two or more consonants often contain morphemes such as in inflected verbs (e.g. /t͡sʼeɾt/ 'you write') or declined nominals (e.g. /datvs/ 'bear.dative').
Harmonic clusters One special characteristic of Georgian phonotactics is the occurrence of two-consonant sequences termed harmonic clusters, which involve two consonants in which the laryngeal quality is constant across the cluster (i.e. both are voiced, aspirated, or ejective). Harmonic clusters are pronounced with individual releases of each segment , and occur both word-initially and word-medially; e.g. /bgeɾa/ 'sound', /t͡sʰxovɾeba/ 'life', or /apʼkʼi/ აპკი 'membrane'.
The first consonant of a harmonic cluster may be a stop or an affricate, whereas the second segment may be either a velar stop or a velar/uvular fricative. All harmonic clusters are sequences of a front and a back consonant. Harmonic clusters may themselves occur in larger clusters of consonants, such as in three-consonant sequence /tʼkʼbili/ ტᲙბილი 'sweet'. +Georgian harmonic clustersC1C2 MannerC1C2 PlaceCluster PhonationVoicedAspiratedEjectiveStop-StopLabio-Velar/bɡeɾa/ ბგერა/pʰkʰʷili/ ფქვილი/pʼkʼuɾeba/ პკურებაCorono-Velar/dɡoma/ დგომა/tʰkʰeʃi/ თქეში/tʼkʼbili/ ტკბილიAffricate-StopAlveolar-Velar/d͡zɡide/ ძგიდე/t͡sʰkʰeɾa/ ცქერა/t͡sʼkʼmutʼuni/ წკმუტუნიPost-alveolar-Velar/d͡ʒɡupʰi/ ჯგუფი/t͡ʃʰkʰaɾa/ ჩქარა/t͡ʃʼkʼʷiani/ ჭკვიანიStop-FricativeLabio-Velar/Uvular/bɣud͡ʒa/ ბღუჯა/pʰxizeli/ ფხიზელი/pʼχʼrobi/ პყრობიCorono-Velar/Uvular/dɣʷena/ დღვენა/tʰxili/ თხილი/tʼχʼuili/ ტყუილი
Non-harmonic and longer consonant clusters with audio examples Recordings are available on the relevant Wiktionary entries, linked to below. Examples of words that begin with two consonants in non-harmonic clusters (note that affricates /t͡s d͡z t͡sʼ/ etc. behave as one segment) : /t͡sʼqʼali/ (), 'water' /st͡sʼori/ (), 'correct' /rd͡ze/ (), 'milk' /tʰma/ (), 'hair' /mtʰa/ (), 'mountain' /t͡sʰxeni/ (), 'horse' Examples of the many words that begin with three contiguous consonants: /tʰkʰven/ (), 'you ' /mt͡sʼvane/ (), 'green' /t͡sʰxviɾi/ (), 'nose' /t’k’bili/ (), 'sweet' /mt’k’ivneuli/ (), 'painful' /t͡ʃʰɾdiloetʰi/ (), 'north' A few words in Georgian that begin with four contiguous consonants. Examples are: (), 'murderer' (), 'dead' (), 'drunk' (), 'row, screeve' Some extreme cases also exist in Georgian. For example, the following word begins with six contiguous consonants: (), 'trainer' While the following word begins with seven: (), 'you train us' And the following words begin with eight: (), 'you peel us' (), 'you tear us'
Prosody Although the first syllable of Georgian words tends to be prominent, there is disagreement as to whether Georgian has lexical stress. In any case, there are no pairs of words in Georgian that contrast in meaning due to stress placement