Georgian (ქართული ენა, kartuli ena, pronounced [ˈkʰäɾt̪ʰuli ˈe̞n̪ä]) 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 Megrelian 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 (Megrelian 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 Georgia 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.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
