Click on the Eye to hear the Georgian numbers in Real Audio!
Georgian Font
Georgian
Phrases
Georgian Grammar
Georgian
Caucasian/Southern/Georgian
Georgian is spoken primarily in Georgia, the
newly independent nation, situated in the Caucasus mountains, and
bordering Turkey and the Black Sea. Its speakers number over 3
1/2 million, or about two-thirds of the republic's population.
Georgian belongs to the Caucasian family of languages, which are
unique among the rest of the world's languages, but since these
languages have been grouped more on the basis of geography than
linguistics, it is questionable whether any of the other
Caucasian languages are actually related to it. In any event, it
is the most widely spoken of these languages, and the only one
with an ancient literary tradition.
The origin of the beautiful Georgian alphabet is obscure, but it
is known to have been invented in the 5th century. It is written
from left to right. The present script, called Mkhedruli
("secular writing") replaced the original Khutsuri
("church writing") in the 11th century. There are 33
letters, without distinction between upper and lowercase, and
with one letter for each sound, and one sound for each letter.
The Georgians call themselves Kartvelebi and their land Sakartvelo.
The language contains some formidable consonant clusters, such as
seen in Tbilisi, Mtskheta, Tkvarcheli, and Tskhnvali; and a
rather complex and irregular grammar system.
By the time of the Russian Revolution, Georgia had become a true
cosmopolitan center intellectually, politically, artistically and
commercially, with a flourishing street culture. After a brief
period of independence and upheaval that lasted 3 years, Georgia
finally joined the new Soviet Union in 1921.
It could be said that the Georgians of that period had more than
a vested interest in their future, in that the man who took over
the mantle of shaping and leading the Soviet Union, Joseph
Stalin, was a Georgian! Born in Gori, a market town northeast of
Tbilisi, his real name was Ioseb Jughashvili--and he learned
Russian only as an adult.
The Knight in the Tiger's Skin, the great epic of
Georgian literature, was composed around the year 1200. It
consists of more 1,600 four-line stanzas. Virtually nothing is
known of the author other than his name, Shota Rustaveli.