Hello my friends, my name is Julie and today we’re travelling to the misty heights of
the Caucasus mountains where the Georgian language is spoken.
So, Georgia, um, not that one, the country, is located in the Caucasus mountain region
on the border of Europe and Asia.
The Georgians themselves proudly call their country Sakartvelo meaning “the land of the kartvels”.
This word actually gave the name to the whole language family the Georgian language belongs to.
Georgian is one of the 4 members of the Kartvelian language family along with the Svan, the Megrelian
both spoken in Georgia and the Laz spoken in Turkey just across the border.
From all of these languages Georgian is the biggest spoken by almost 4 million people
mostly in Georgia but also in some neighbouring countries like Russia.
Georgian is also the only language in the family that has a written form.
However when we try to zoom out and look for the relatives of the Kartvelian language family
we see that they are all alone in this big world, surrounded by the enemies.
Neighbouring Russia, Armenia and Iran speak in Indoeuropean languages, to which the Georgian
is not connected.
Turkey and Azerbaijan speak in Turkic languages, to which the Georgian is not connected.
But if we look closer we can see that the Caucasus region is sprinkled with an astonishing
linguistic variety.
These languages which are neither Indoeuropean, nor Turkic are sometimes grouped into the
Caucasian language group which includes the Kartvelian languages.
Even though this grouping represents the common geographical situation of the languages while
any genetic relations between them have not been proven.
It means that as for today the Kartvelian languages are considered not related to any
other known languages as their features are quite unique.
For example, the pronunciation.
The Georgian language as many other languages in the Caucasus region has a difficult relationship
with the vowels having only 5 of them and loves consonants.
From these there are some familiar sounds like s and p, but also some more exotic examples
like q and ts’, which is different from the ts, or tch’, which is different from the tch.
What’s more, they love their consonants so much that they don’t hesitate to have
consonant clusters with more and more and more consonants.
But of course, as you might have noticed already, the coolest feature of the Georgian language
is its beautiful alphabet.
It is absolutely unique to the Georgian language and is one of the only 14 alphabetical systems
existing in the world.
Nobody knows for sure how it was created.
For instance, the Armenians like to say that it was Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian scholar
who also created the Armenian alphabet by the way, who taught the Georgians how to write.
To which the Georgians usually answer “Yeah, could be…
Or…
It was created by our heroic and maybe mythical king Pharnavaz in the 3rd century BC”.
The most accepted version though is that the alphabet was developed from either Aramaic
or Greek alphabet.
The earliest known examples of the Georgian script already appear in the 5th century,
as proven by the Bir el Qutt inscriptions found in the Middle East.
Another cool feature about the alphabet is that it is phonetic.
Meaning that it has 33 letters and there are 33 sounds in the Georgian language, each letter
stands for one sound and you read as you write.
So ingenious!
Especially when you compare it to the madness happening with the English reading and pronunciation.
Add to that that the Georgian doesn’t have uppercase or lowercase letters, neither it
has difference between printed or handwritten script and you might get an idea that the
Georgian is not that complicated after all.
Well, at least until you see the grammar.
The Georgian uses the case system, meaning, that depending on the function of the noun
in the sentence it changes its ending.
That means that the Georgian has a rather free word order even though the verb prefers
to stay at the end.
Well, at least to make life a little bit easier the Georgian doesn’t have any grammatical
gender at all.
Even to say he, she or it they use the same word “is”.
So the problem with gender inequality in languages is resolved in Georgian once and for all.
The Georgian verb requires some time to master as it has four classes each having its set
of rules of conjugation.
There are three tenses, past present and future, which can be perfect or imperfect, which can
have conditional or subjunctive clauses…
Hmm usual stuff.
At least the counting system is easy.
If you like math.
Because the Georgian uses the vigesimal counting system.
What does it mean?
So let’s see.
One, two, three, alright in the beginning everything looks fine, nothing very suspicious,
ok twenty, twenty one, twenty nine, twenty ten, twenty ten and one.
Wait a minute.
Forty three is 2 times twenty and three?
And seventy five is 3 times twenty and ten and 5?
And I thought only the French could have come up with such a counting system.
Interestingly enough the Georgian nouns with the numerals never go plural.
Why?
Because.
So I have let’s say one cat, two cat, 108 and still cat.
And by the way they have different words that translate as to have, one for the living objects
and the other one for the non-living objects.
And in this case the car, the boat, the motorcycle are considered to be 100% alive.
By the way, do some of these words remind you of something very familiar?
Let’s look at the vocabulary.
In Georgian when you mean dad you say “mama” but some of the vocabulary can still be less confusing.
The Georgian might be unique not-related-to-anyone-else language but its vocabulary displays the history
of foreign influences upon it.
For example “bali” which means cherry comes from the persian “balu” and “bairaxi”
meaning flag comes from the turkish “bayrak”.
Words of Russian descent appeared later.
Some examples might include “velosipedi”, “pliazhi” bringing to the Georgian language
some new concepts.
Finally, any modern word can be transformed into a Georgian word either by
taking the word as such if it ends with a vowel such as metro for instance, “metro”,
or by adding an “i” at the end if the word ends with a consonant.
Because all the Georgian nouns have to end with a vowel, otherwise you will not be able
to put it in different cases and the whole system will collapse.
So let’s see some examples.
Internet becomes “interneti”, telephone becomes “telephoni” and so on.
You can do this with all of the international words so now congratulations, you’ve just
learned 3000 Georgian words!
I find it always fascinating to see how the language reflects the history of its people.
Georgians live in the epicentre of a very diverse region, on the borders of massive
empires which ment constant wars.
This situation finds its reflexion even in today’s language, because when the Georgians
say “Hello” - “gamardzhoba”, it can be translated as “victory to you”.
As we have already mentioned, the Georgians are all alone in this big world surrounded by the enemies
and in order to have a right to exist they had to learn to come together and fight back.
Which they had always succeeded to do as even in the Soviet times Georgia was the only Soviet
republic that had right to use their language at the official level.
So the Georgian people have definitely many things to be proud of but you can always come
to visit because as the saying goes “Stumari ghvtisaa” - The guest is from the God.
And I say to you all thank you so much for watching.
Please consider to subscribe if you liked the video because more is coming.
There are just so many languages in the world and they’re fascinating because as I always say
language is the key to understand the people who speak it.
So learn languages, my friends.