Talk:Georgian language/Archive 2

Writing direction
Is this alphabet written left-to-right or right-to-left?
 * Left to right. I'll look at the page and see if that has to be made clearer. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 16:11, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What's the pronunciation of these consonant clusters? Surely there must be some Schwas involved?
 * Not to my knowledge, but I have only a passing acquaintance with the language. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 21:25, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't know the language at all, but perhaps r, v and m can play vowels and form syllables? This is a common phenomenon elsewhere (Serbocroatian smrt = death, Hrvatska = Croatia; Czech Vltava = the river that flows through Prague; French théâtre = theatre/-er; German geben, denken, spielen = give, think, play actually end in -bm, -kng, -ln with nobody pronouncing the e).
 * David Marjanović     david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at        22:07 CET-summertime       2005/8/7
 * Nope. Only vowels can form syllable nuclei in Georgian - which makes it that much more frightening. :) thefamouseccles 02:44, 31 Jan 2006 (UTC)
 * Are you sure? According to Butskhrikidze & van de Weijer (2003), the phoneme /v/ has three allophones [v ɸ w], and considering all initial consonant cluster words (at least in the relevant section in the article) contain /v/, it would be surprising if it cannot behave as a syllable nuclei (or at least a pronunciation assistant) in some way. Nessimon (talk) 22:23, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
 * It's been a while since I've read it, but according to The Consonant Phonotactics of Modern Georgian (free ebook available from the publisher: http://www.lotpublications.nl/the-consonant-phonotactics-of-georgian-the-consonant-phonotactics-of-georgian) ვ after an obstruent is actually coarticulated, e.g., initial გვ- is actually [ɡʷ]. Besides Georgian phonology never treats ვ as a syllabic nucleus, no word has ვ but no vowel, and words that receive an extension -ა before monosyllabic verbs (ვინა ხარ? "who are you?") still receive it when the verb has ვ separated from the vowel by a consonant of lower sonority, e.g., საზოგადო ჭირზედა ვწერთ "we are writing about a social misfortune" (Ilia Ch'avch'avadze) with [ɸ] and არავინა გვყავს გვარში ისეთი, რომ ეგ სახელი ერქვას "There is no one among your relatives who is called by that name" (Luke 1:61) with [ɡʷ]. Friendly Cave (talk) 18:44, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120616101948/http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/grads/lofstedt/Georgian-intonation-WPP-106.pdf to http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/grads/lofstedt/Georgian-intonation-WPP-106.pdf

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External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070930020817/http://www.kartvfund.org.ge/page3.html to http://www.kartvfund.org.ge/page3.html

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The latin script version "Kartuli" is only mentioned in the infobox
Shouldn't we also include this transliterated form of the Georgian word for "Georgian language", Kartuli, somewhere in the lead paragraph itself, or even right there in the intro sentence? For my own language's wiki article it is mentioned, although no transliteration was necessary there because we use latin script. The lead sentence goes: "Hungarian (magyar) is a..." there. Reason for asking: I was looking for this word fruitlessly for a while. My fault, I ignored the infobox - as I usually do - for a long long time. But still... Also here's some off topic info, I just met my first Georgian today and he taught me some words. I wanted to say "I now speak a little Kartuli" but failed to find the right word in time. Kargad brdzandebodet,  •ː•   3ICE   •ː•   21:24, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅-- Ⴂ. ႡႠႪႠႾႠႻႤ   ★  09:31, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Miscellaneous discussion
I notice that Theresa Knott removed a couple of links that were added by an anonymous user. That may have been the right thing to do, but could we have some sort of explanation for why it was done? --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 16:09, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

To the user who corrected my incorrect encoding of Khutsuri and Mkhedruli, I wonder if you could add the Georgian script for Saint Mesrop Mashtots and King Farnavaz. Thanks. Hippietrail 14:47, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)

It is not unexpected that somebody removed St Mesrop Mashtots as believed inventor of the Georgian script. It may be controversial and it may be an Armenian-centric view. You may even have something to quote on it's being provably untrue. All the article states is that the invention is usually attributed to him and this is a fact:

Google search for "mashtots|mesrob|mesrop creation|creator|created|inventor|invented|invention georgian":
 * 568

Google search for "parnavaz|farnavaz creation|creator|created|inventor|invented|invention georgian":
 * 93

So that's roughly 85.93% mentions to Mesrop vs. 14.07% to Farnavaz.

Please clarify the article and debunk any myths but cutting chunks out isn't the Wikipedia way. Hippietrail 06:58, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I moved this page back. See Naming conventions (languages) and Naming conventions (capitalization). --mav 03:00, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Dear mav, I am Georgian historian. The Georgian (Kartvelian) language is a Iberian-Caucasian language (in Georgia is a well-known scientific school in the field of "IBERIAN-CAUCASIAN LINGUISTICS"). Georgian is spoken about 3 million abroad (Turkey, Russia, Iran, etc.). I think that for this article will be beter a title "Georgian alphabet" (or "Georgian language and alphabet"). Thank you in advance. --Dr. Levan Z. Urushadze 31 Jan 2004


 * I wouldn't object to the title Georgian language and alphabet but why does "and alphabet" need to be in the title? --mav 03:35, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * It doesn't. We could certainly have separate Georgian language and Georgian alphabet articles though. Morwen 11:20, Jan 31, 2004 (UTC)

The speaker population estimates are confusing especially when compared to the ones given in South Caucasian languages. Would someone please give the separate estimates for My understanding from the data given is that the whole population of Georgia uses Georgian (because it is the official language and the only written one) but only about 70% (about 4 million) are native speakers. But that means that about 1.5 million people in Georgia are not native speakers of Georgian. Are they all speakers of the three dialects, or are there other languages (not South Caucasian) spoken in Georgia? Jorge Stolfi 04:25, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * How many people use Georgian (either as a native language or as an oficial or "everyday business" language) in each country;
 * How many people are native speakers of each of the four languages (Georgian, Svan, Laz, Megrelian) in each country.


 * 71% (more than 4 million) of the population of Georgia uses Georgian and are native speakers (ethnographic groups of Georgian people: Imeretians, Megrels, Guruls, Svans, Lazs (Chans), Ajarians, Rachvels, Lechkhumians, Kakhetians, Kartlis, Mokhevians, Khevsurs, Tushs).

Trivia: Phononatics section shows two examples of consonant clusters; if anyone is interested, there also exists the extreme example of such word — with eight consecutive consonants in a row: გვბრდღვნი gvbrdghvni ("You pluck our feathers out") — something that an anthropomorphic bird would say in a fantasy story or could be used as a metaphor by someone who is being robbed of money or clothes. 0xfeeddeadbeef (talk) 01:43, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Does Georgian contrast affricates from stop fricative sequences (e.g. /t͡s/ from /ts/)? I found online a reference to a supposed word Romanized "shemomadjamo" (presumably "შემომედჯამო"), but without the original Georgian, I'm wondering if (assuming the word exists) it should actually have just the 'j' (such as in "Djibouti" due to French influence), if the /d/ is pronounced /d̚/ (effectively lengthening the /d͡ʒ/), or if the Georgians pronounce the sequence as two distinct consonants, as in Polish. Of course, this assumes that the word even exists, and if so, whether I got the spelling right. Blanket P.I. (talk) 20:32, 8 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Upon further searching, I found შემომეჭამო (shemomech'amo) to likely be the word discussed. The only question I have now is whether stop fricative sequences ever occur. (I would assume that since Georgian spelling is phonemic, if there were a word written with a stop fricative sequence it would also be pronounced as such) Blanket P.I. (talk) 20:59, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Does the [j] sound exists in modern Georgian?
Old Georgian had [j] (y) as an allophone of /i/ in postvocalic position, does it still exists in modern Georgian? 2A01:CB10:65:400:5859:3658:7ACE:1630 (talk) 02:00, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Allophonic Variation?
As a native speaker of Georgian, I feel like ი /i/ becomes ჲ [j] when it is in a post-vocalic position, as in for example რაიმე [ɾajmɛ] and კაი [kʼaj], also I think კ, გ, ქ, ხ, and ღ become more fronted when they occur next to front vowels.

Are there any studies that mention the kind of allophony I described here? 2A01:CB10:65:400:BDD4:281B:590:5315 (talk) 01:25, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Phonology section needs improvement
Or better yet what about creating a separate page for Georgian Phonology? 2A01:CB10:65:400:30B0:5135:283F:C1DA (talk) 13:06, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

I have written a little about Georgian Phonology on the Italian version of this article (check it out, Google Translate should do the trick: it:Lingua georgiana). I could help in translating that content. It's mostly taken from Hewitt's grammar anyway. Gnothidichselbst (talk) 11:20, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Ejective consonants
this page claims that their glottalization is rather weak, what's source for this claim? 2A01:CB10:65:400:7909:9EEC:A5EA:D72D (talk) 12:23, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

ɛ and ɔ
Why are They transcribed as /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ if they're actually mid as known in the vowel chart. 2A01:CB10:65:400:9C4B:C6C2:95CF:EE49 (talk) 22:25, 9 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Ultimately because the IPA lacks dedicated symbols for [e̞] and [o̞]. Nicodene (talk) 15:16, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

Do Diphthongs occur in Georgian?
I've heard That there are no Diphthongs in Georgian but is it really true? 92.184.124.70 (talk) 16:42, 10 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Phonemically, certainly there are none. Phonetically, it's less obvious one way or the other. Nicodene (talk) 16:02, 20 August 2022 (UTC)