Talk:Georgian language/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

English zelkova = Russian дзельква = Georgian ძელქვა ?

I've been researching the English word zelkova which is said to derive from a Caucasian language. Dictionaries are very hard to find so could anybody here verfiy that I've tracked down the right word please? — Hippietrail 13:46, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes. you have tracked down the right word. But, I am not sure whether it is Russian or Georgian origin. I also looked it up in merriam-webster online dictionary (is that where you looked it up?) and it also gives the both Russian and Georgian origin, but does not tell which.

The OED gives the following brief etymology:

[mod.L. (E. Spach 1841, in Ann. des Sci. Nat.: Bot. 2nd Ser. XV. 352), f. zelkoua, tselkwa, cited by Spach as local names for Z. carpinifolia in the Caucasus: cf. mod.Russ. dzel´kova grabolistnaya.]

"f." means "from". It doesn't give the language, but it looks like the English and Russian both derive from the Caucasian source. --kwamikagami 04:09, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC) [that's weird, I'm logged in but can't sign my name.]

Hi! Dzelkva is a tree. Dzeli - beam and kva-stone. It is indigenous plant growing in Georgia. As its timber is rockhard we call it dzelkva. SO it is not difficult where from this word is coming. Rezo Best regards

I concur. Dzelqva is a combination of two words: Dzeli - pole, pillar; qva - stone, rock. I highly doubt its Russian origin. None of these words are meaningful in Russian.

Inconsistent romanization

We seem to have at least two inconsistent romanization schemes in this article; I'd like to settle on one. In the table that lists the vowels and consonants, we use IPA, which I personally prefer, whereas in some of the following discussions we use symbols like ç which are not IPA and which we never define.

ACW 19:35, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

ç is, in fact, an IPA symbol (voiceless palatal fricative as in German ich), but I don't know if that's how it's being used here. --Angr/_comhrá 23:29, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

That's almost true. The voiceless palatal fricative is written in IPA with a "curly-tailed c", not a c with cedille. I wish I knew the Unicode for the former, so I could insert it here. Anyway, I've certainly seen the latter used for the former, and that's the sound I thought of when I saw the romanization. But alas, that segment is not used in Georgian. The writer probably meant ʧ. I wish somebody with better IPA-typing skills than I have would go through and make this consistent. ACW 02:22, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Incorrect Use of IPA

/x/ & /ɣ/ are VELAR, not uvular. I would edit the article, but I don't know if Georgian has uvular or velar fricatives- so I'm not sure which way to edit it. BryanAJParry

They range from velar to uvular depending upon context; some people use more uvulars, some more velars. Most reference grammars of Georgian call these either "velar-uvular" or "postvelar". One could put them in the velar class for the sake of regularity, I suppose, but to do that is to oversimplify the phonetic reality. thefamouseccles 02:54, 26 Aug 2005 (UTC)

"Georgian, A Reading Grammar" by Howard I Aronson says they are both postvelar, but uses the symbol ɣ for the voiced fricative. I am currently in Georgia, so I will try to listen more carefully, but from what I have heard, it is [ɣ] at least in certain contexts. CyborgTosser (Only half the battle) 11:43, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

This seems to be resolved with the current (2008) chart layout and footnote.

Unicode adds Nuskhuri

Unicode, up till version 4.1.0, mapped Mkhedruli as an optional lowercase for the uppercase Asomtavruli. Version 4.1.0 encodes the lowercase Nuskhuri (from which Mkhedruli is derived), and maps Nuskhuri as the lowercase for Asomtavruli, clearing Mkhedruli for exclusively modern use. You can see it on the PDF, and it would be a good idea to work from that PDF to add another table for this article, a table for Nuskhuri. The reason I'm not adding this table myself is that I don't know which characters to mark as obsolete (the lavender cells in the existing two tables). --Shlomital 19:09, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Genetic classification: Caucasian languages is not a genetic family

It would be more correct to remove Caucasian languages from the classification field since it is not a genetic class.--Imz 20:12, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Disputed

Georgian writing system: phonemic orthography or phonetic orthography?

The article says it is phonetic orthography, whereas the phonemic orthography article says it is phonemic orthography (which sounds more plausible).

Georgian writing system is phonetic, meaning that it is read exactly as it is written.

This issue should be resolved by someone with enough knowledge.--Imz 06:48, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

No native orthography of a language is "phonetic" in the sense phonetic is used in linguistics (something like "representing distinctions of sound made including ones that have no bearing on native speaker's interpretation of that sound"). However, they are "phonetic" in a sense that is common amongst lay-people (something like phonemic in the linguistic sense, or perhaps a union of phonemic and phonetic). Of course, an orthography might have phonetic aspects to it (frequently depending on how you descriminate between phonemes and allophones). In the interest of clarity, and because phonetic orthography goes nowhere, converting "phonetic" to "phonemic" is probably a good idea. —Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 10:26, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I've rewritten the section. Disputants, please look again and see if it now meets your objections. ACW 21:34, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Merge request

I am proposing that Georgian grammar be merged into this article. Most "XXX language" articles have the grammar section in the main article, even if the grammar section is very long (see Sanskrit language for an example). I would suggest that that's a good model to follow. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) (desk) 18:16, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it's the Sanskrit article that should be changed! Normal Wikipedia practice is to avoid very long articles by splitting sections out as sub-articles and placing a summary and link in the main article.

Adding a grammar summary to this article (perhaps three to five paragraphs) would enhance it. Readers who only need the basic information on grammar would see it right there, and those needing more detail would click through to find it. That seems the best way forward to me. Chris Jefferies 11:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Chris and Felix. Don't merge. The Sanskrit article is unnecessarily too long. Both Georgian language and Georgian grammar articles are long enough as they are, and they serve their separate purposes well. --jonsafari 23:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with Marnen/agree with Chris. The Georgian grammar article is waaaay too long to fit here without going dizzy. A brief couple-of-paragraphs summary should be added here, and the same with the alphabet. Sanskrit needs to be changed, just as Hungarian language/Hungarian grammar recently has.—Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 13:14, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Velar or palatal?

The phonology section of this article makes reference to velar fricatives, and then says that this is the sound in German Bach or Scottish Loch. But these sounds are voiceless palatal fricatives. So which is it? Did the original author mean the Georgian sound is palatal, or are the examples meant to be approximations? In the latter case, we should put in a note to that effect. 216.39.182.234 03:33, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

These words are both textbook examples of velar fricatives. The <ch> example from German commonly appears in reference to palatal fricatives since it is pronounced as a palatal fricative when it does not follow a back vowel, but it does in "Bach," making this an example of a velar fricative (/bax/). As for the Scottish version, I have no experience with the language itself, but its <ch> is constantly cited as identical to the German in "Bach."--Coyne025 02:30, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Font

It would be helpful if a font containing the glyphs of the Georgian alphabet could be linked to (from both the Georgian alphabet and Georgian language pages). I don't know of any OSs that include one by default. Njál 00:42, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

My XP seems to; I certainly didn't specially install it.--137.205.76.214 09:39, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Georgian in Wikipedia

A guideline on whether or not to italicize Georgian (and all scripts other than Latin) is being debated at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (text formatting)#Italics in Cyrillic and Greek characters. - - Evv 16:41, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Georgian Language

213.131.54.62 10:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)Just a correction from a Georgian linguist: Megrelian is not a language its a dialect of Georgian language.

No, Mingrelian is commonly regarded as a language among most linguists and caucasologists in the world. It's however a typical view of local scientists (not just in Georgia) to tread minor languages as dialects, where they actually aren't. — N-true 03:22, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Clarity of Phonetic descriptions

Is the Georgian /v/ truly bilabial, or is it the labiodental sound to which this symbol is commonly assigned? Maybe this column should rather be called "Labial," since a new column for just the fricative might be odd. Also, perhaps two columns could be used for Dental to divide it into Dental and Alveolar, since at least the fricatives and affricates must be alveolar, and as result I am unsure if /t,d,n,l/ are all dental as well.--Coyne025 02:40, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

The Georgian /v/ is a complicated character. Personally, I contend that it contains a persistent combination of a relatively weak labiodental sound and a bilabial--although there is a labiodental fricative sound present, its dominant characteristic is the sound caused by the rounding of the lips. Most phoneticians who study Georgian, however, contend that it is sometimes pronounced as a labiodental and sometimes as a bilabial. --Treemother199 03:53, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Georgian R

What is georgian r pronounced like? Is it a trill or an approximant? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.76.58.126 (talk) 10 May 2006 (UTC)

A trill or a tap, depending on context and level of formality ... I think. A native speaker's response would be welcome. ACW 01:14, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

It absolutely depends on the context. In everyday speech it is most often a tap, whereas a tamada at a supra would deliver the toasts with a rolled r (and the further along the toasts go, the more trilled it can become...). 128.135.96.205 02:14, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Phantom vowel

"In English, the closest sound to this is in the word rhythm, which can be heard in the pronunciation of the letters -th- and -m, in the pronunciation of e in the word butter, and in the pronuncation of train between the letters t and r."

Um, in my dialect, there is no vowel between these consonants. I pronounce them [rIDm=], [bV4r\=], and [t_SrEjn]. What's this "phantom" vowel supposed to be, exactly? -- Dysfunktion 00:38, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you about "train", but in my dialect, and in standard American pronunciation in general, "rhythm" and "butter" do indeed have vowels. That's why they're two syllables -- "rhyth-?m" and "but-ter"; no syllable is possible without a vowel. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 05:23, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, for me anyway, m and r are the vowels --Dysfunktion 19:22, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think most phoneticians reckon that there's a very short schwa before English "syllabic" consonants. If the consonant is /r/, it sort of fuses with the schwa in a phenomenon called rhotacization. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 19:51, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This phantom vowel business is patently false. First of all, it is not physically impossible to pronounce two contiguous consonants. Second, if you have any doubts that Georgians can speak several contiguous consonants, listen to a word with a so-called "harmonic cluster", where a cluster of consonants has only a single release. If there were interceding vowels, there would be multiple releases. As for the really long clusters, despite what some books say, I think there must be something syllabic in there (although the one syllable per vowel rule might be useful for determining the position of the stress), but I don't think it's a schwa. I'm in Georgia at the moment, so I will listen for it, but I think it will be difficult to pin down as the really long clusters seem to be rare among commonly used words. CyborgTosser (Only half the battle) 12:00, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree, there is no "phantom vowel" between any consonants in Georgian. Entire cluster is pronounced at once. Also no consonant (r, m, etc) function as a vowel. Giorgi from Georgia

I think someone who actually speaks Georgian, or at least someone with training in phonetics and access to some Georgian recordings, needs to take a look at the section on consonant clusters and particularly the account of the "epithentic vowel" (previously called a "phantom vowel" in the article), which I am pretty sure doesn't exist. Not only does this section claim that there is an epithentic vowel, but gives a long description of rules used to determine where the epithentic vowel is pronounced. Even if there really is an epithentic vowel in some consonant clusters, I am certain that the rules here are patent nonsense. For example, in harmonic clusters, there is certainly no vowel, yet the rules here imply that there would be. The same could be said of consonant clusters that appear in other languages, such as English, without epithentic vowels (e.g. /skr/). By the way, [1] has a sound sample, if anyone wants to listen and give their opinion. It sounds to me like the consonant clusters are pronounced as they are written. CyborgTosser (Only half the battle) 22:23, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Gamardzhobat Folks (hello). I've been following this discussion for a while with interest and amusement. If you are so-inclined I suggest that you have a listen to some of the various sound bytes available on the "Armazi" website - Armazi is a rather extraordinary research tool available online for the study of Georgian language / culture. You will find numerous examples of this "epithentic vowel" in the sound bytes - spoken by native Georgians, but whether you choose to believe that it exists or not is another matter. As someone who has studied Georgian languages (somewhat), and Georgian music (alot), I can assure you that this phenomenon exists, but for every Georgian linguist who will agree with you about it you'll find another who will argue against it.

I offer here a test scenario: find a (native) Georgian speaker, and ask them to say the following (for example): "k’argad vmgheri da vcek’vav" (I sing and dance well). (note: the "c" here would be pronounced like "ts" in English, as in "hats".

I believe you will find that (almost) without exception, Georgian speakers would pronounce this to sound like there is a so-called "epithentic vowel" occuring between "v" and "m" in "vmgheri" , and between "v" and "c" in "vcek'vav".

Marnen - you live around the corner from an exceptional speaker (and singer) of Georgian - the folk singer Carl Linich. I am sure he would be happy to give you a demonstration of this phenomenon. - John, 2006/May/11

Can anyone recommend a good Georgian reference in English that would shed some light on the pronunciation of consonant clusters? Aronson's Georgian: A Reading Grammar is very clear on "one syllable per vowel", but I also understand that Aronson is by many considered weak (or at times inaccurate) on pronunciation.

In any case, until there is consensus, I think we should pull the paragraphs that give details on where the epithentic vowel is pronounced. The shear detail of this section gives the impression that this is much more agreed upon than it really is (and as I have said before, I think the details are wrong anyway).

One final question, does vmgheri have a vowel between the v and the m, or is the m syllabic? I think this is something we often get confused as English speakers, since many dictionaries (or at least American dictionaries) refuse to put syllabic nasals in their pronunciations. CyborgTosser (Only half the battle) 22:54, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm native georgianspeaking and I can't agree with "Phantom vowel", when there are several consonants we pronounce them together with no "phantom vowel" but in some case we do a little pause between consonants like in ცეცხლმფრქვევი which is pronounced as ცეცხლ-მფრქვევი. I tried to pronounce georgian words with contagiuos consonants - it is impossible to hear any phantom vowel in natural speak, but when I try to pronounce the same words slowly, like we do when we teach to foreigners georgian pronounciation there are some kinds of prononounciatial stuff between consonants, but even they are not phantom vowel but pauses which servs to well distinguish these consonants.

About "k’argad vmgheri da vcek’vav" - we pronounce it in natural speak as "k'argat/k'arkat fmgheri da fcek'vav" but in a slow pronounciation we say "k'argad v-mgheri da v-cek'vav". წკაპო

Where did this "phantom vowel" business even come from? Is there any published source that supports the existence of such a thing? I would suggest that if there is no such source forthcoming (NB. people's untrained impressions do not count), we should remove this section. I'm a graduate student in phonetics studying with a native Georgian speaker and I have not noticed any epenthetic vowels in these sorts of common initial clusters. More importantly, however, no published source I have seen posits such a thing: neither the grammars (e.g. Aronson 1990, Hewitt 1995) nor phonetics/phonology specific articles, of which there are many in prestigious journals (e.g. Chitoran 1998 in _Phonology_ [2],the forthcoming _Illustration of the IPA_ article from the Berkeley Phonology Lab by Shosted & Chikovani [3], etc.).

In fact, these phoneticians' articles make it very clear that the complex clusters are exactly that: strings of consonants with no interceding vowels (except, perhaps, in *really* complex clusters, but surely not in the run-of-the-mill 2-3 consonant ones). Shosted & Chikovani (2006) transcribe a Georgian passage in narrow IPA and do not mention or show any epenthetic vowels.

Finally, I would also like to stress that we are talking about the Georgian language here as it is normally written and spoken, not as it is recited in music. There might be pronunciation differences in music (e.g., the way the French pronounce final schwas when they sing that they don't normal pronounce in speech; I have no idea). Even so, I know that in Georgian poetry, syllables are counted, and it is always one vowel per syllable (e.g. eight vowels per line)... epenthetic vowels never factor into it, which we would expect if they existed.

The "Ghost Vowels" section should be axed. Lesser 04:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Words that begin with multiple consonants

Whether an epenthetic vowel ever appears within Kartuli consonant clusters is disputed by phoneticians. Georgians contend that the pronunciation rules are simple: one vowel per syllable. Some phoneticians contend that an epenthetic vowel does occur under certain circumstances; Aronson argues, "Harmonic clusters will have only one release, while non harmonic clusters will have more than one release," e.g., ბგერა. A possible generalization of this notion (and again, this is controversial) is that an epenthetic vowel does appear between contiguous voiced consonants, albeit one that is extraordinarily slight--nearly imperceptible.

But there can be no dispute in the following examples:

When a consonant follows one of the double-sound consonants (ც, ძ, წ), the epenthetic -ı- is
heard between the first and the second consonant, not in between the two sounds of the first 
consonant. For example, in the pronunciation of წქ (ts'k), the -ı- is between the s and the k; not 
in between the t and the s. Therefore, it is pronounced like, "tsık."  When another consonant 
precedes one of these, again the epenthetic vowel is heard not in between the two sounds of the 
consonant, but right after the first consonant. In the example of ვწერ (vts'er), "I write," the 
phantom vowel emerges between the letters ვ and წ.

I can say without a shadow of doubt that this is incorrect. First of all, I can't even think of a word containing the sequence წქ; Kartuli avoids placing aspirated and ejective consonants next to each other. The only time I know of that this happens is in certain loan words (e.g., დოქტორი = doctor). And in these cases, the consensus among the University of Chicago phonetician crowd is that it is not pronounced as written and that there is assimilation (e.g., დოქტორი would be pronounced დოქთორი). But this is of course besides the point.

The principal function of the letter ვ within consonant clusters is to "round" the sound of the other consonants (i.e., all consonants within the cluster will be pronounced with rounded lips). To lend it so much weight as to give it its own syllable would sound ridiculous to a native speaker.

The argument that the epithentic vowel appears "When a consonant follows one of the double-sound consonants" is unsupportable. The examples given demonstrate how absurd this hypothesis is. წყალი, for example, begins with two ejective consonants. By definition, an ejective may have no release of air whatsoever--the glottal tract is closed. I challenge anyone to produce a vowel, epenthetic or not, while closing their glottal tract.

If someone wants to insert an educated treatment of the debate over a possible epenthetic vowel into this article, I have no serious objections. But much of the information in this section is false and I am going to remove it--if there are objections, please raise them here. Treemother199 03:10, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

A "release" is not a "vowel." tkven has a released t, I believe, but the slight, non-syllabic aspiration following "t" is not a vowel. Vowels do things like head syllables. Anyway, it's nice to see some knowledgeable discussion of the matter. Lesser 09:17, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Number of speakers

This article states that there are 4.1 million speakers, but at the same time there are 6 millions Georgians [4]. Does this mean that a lot of Georgians don't speak Georgian? DVoit 14:20, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

No, that number is way off. That higher number would have to include the number of ethnic Georgians in the diaspora. The real number is something closer to the Ethnologue's stated number of 4,237,710. (UTC)

Njnikusha 02:31, 23 August 2007 (UTC)Ok. i have same question. I wrote an essey on this ex-soviet country an i know there is 6-7 million Georgians and how come 4.1 million speaks the language? it makes no sence!!!!! 90% speaks the georgian language in country itself, so maybe 4.1 stands for that? please take a note that a lot of people depend on this web-site, make an appropriate changes so people can get a correct info

thanks —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Njnikusha (talk • contribs) 02:31, August 23, 2007 (UTC).

Phonotactics

Is it really even worth the space on the page to just have a single sentence that states nothing more than 'The language contains some formidable consonant clusters...' with two sample words? It doesn't even say if they're onsets or codas let alone if there's a difference in the complexity of onsets and codas (based on other parts of the article I assume it's mainly only onsets that are allowed to be complex, but just how complex is not clear) and which phonemes can be where. Can we at least get someone to indicate where the syllable breaks are? Just looking at the words gvprtskvni and mtsvrtneli and the rest of the article it's by no means obvious whether any of the fricatives, nasals or r's are syllabic, and thus I have no idea even how many syllables exist let alone where the syllable breaks might be. Though for gvprtskvni I would guess, gv.prts.kv.ni and for mtsvrtneli I'd bet on something like, mts.vrt.ne.li. If those syllabifications are anywhere near correct then it's inaccurate to call those consonant strings consonant clusters. Paperflight 05:30, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

They're not accurate. The syllabifications are gvprtskvni and mtsvrtne.li (although the 'n' in the former often sounds a bit syllabic to me). --Twid 21:15, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Those entire things are onsets? So in a song or poem gvprtskvni would take only one beat just the same as a word like ni (I have no idea if this is a real word, it's just an example)? That should definitely be covered in some detail in this section of the article. For one thing I don't believe it without at least a citation to a thorough treatment, especially since the sonority is highly periodic. Do they at least carry multiple mora? Paperflight 03:44, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Are we not concerned with the validity of our statements here? Can nobody cite anything that supports the claim that these are solely onsets? If not I encourage you to delete the claim from the article as, 'Encyclopedic content must be verifiable' which, under Wikipedia's definition, this section is not as it has been challenged and no supporting evidence provided. Paperflight 07:26, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Georgian in any browser

Could someone maybe give a hint how to see Georgian text in any browser (IE, Firefox...) in WIN and/or MAC (till 10.3.9) computers, or give a hint which wikipedia page could write anything about this isue??? Aidas-LT (talk) 10:29, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Case System

Could someone clarify the section headed "Inflection"? So far as I am aware, languages fall into two categories: either nominative-accusative or ergative-absolutive. There can certainly be more cases in a language than two, but I don't think those basic pairs ever mix, as this section implies that they do. I would also hazard a guess that the "interesting fact" about Georgian mentioned in the Inflection paragraph (that the cases in some sentences appear reversed) may also follow from the classification - particularly if the language is ergative-absolutive. Clukyanenko (talk) 01:31, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Read up on split ergativity. Hindi is another example of a language where some tense/aspect environments use an ergative-absolutive construction, even though the predominating structure of the language is nominative-accusative. Richwales (talk) 06:01, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Pronunciation of ვ again

This issue was brought up before, but I'd like to try again to get some more details into the article about the pronunciation(s) of ვ.

My impression, from what has already been written, is that ვ is sometimes a labio-dental /v/ (especially word-initial?); sometimes a bilabial /ʋ/ or /β/ (between vowels?); and in consonant clusters, signals that the lips are rounded while pronouncing the cluster as a whole, but without (?) itself representing a separate consonant in this case. I don't speak Georgian and am not in any position to shed light on this subject, so please don't anyone just copy what I've written here into the article; I would really like to hear from people who do speak this language and see what they think.

Additionally, when I listen to Georgian speakers (my cable TV system has an "international" channel which carries a bunch of news shows from all over the world, including Georgia), their pronunciation of საქართველო sounds (to me) almost like საქართულო (/sakartulo/). Can anyone explain this? Or am I just hearing it wrong? Richwales (talk) 05:37, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

my two cents: You're hearing it wrong (or hearing it from a not very good speaker), I'd assume. If well articulated in "proper" Georgian (which is not accentuated) you would hear all sounds clearly, but in colloquial language ვ in some words becomes "deaf" and, hence, hard to hear. - Alsandro · T · w:ka: Th · T 05:38, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

actually I take it back. a.

Richwales, I do not know how you can hear sakartulo. The only explication I can give is that the person who pronounces this word is from Saingilo (the region of Géorgia actually in Azerbaidjan). In Their prononciation საქართველო is heared as საქართüლო (sorry I'm at job, and here I have no possibility to input this letter in georgian). Otherwise, the georgian ვ has several allophones as ჶ, ვ, ჳ. In the literatural pronounciation the ვ at the end of a word and at the beginning of a word if not followed by a vowel is pronounced as ჶ, for example: ვთესავ is pronounced as ჶთესაჶ (ftesaf). Between to consonants in several situations it is pronounced as ჳ (something like english w). But for georgians all these sounds are ვ. if you want more details about it, please, send me your AIM, MSN or GoogleTalk and I'll try to clarify it for you. --წკაპო (talk) 08:11, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Tskapo, and thanks for the feedback. Regarding how საქართველო sounds to my ear (remember that English is my first language and I currently know barely enough Georgian to fill a thimble), what I described earlier is how the word sounds to me when spoken by Mikheil Saakashvili, two different GPB Moambe news presenters, and various other people interviewed on the Moambe news. So I'm assuming it's probably a question of how my English-attuned head is (mis)interpreting the sounds coming into my ears, rather than a regional dialect issue.

One possible explanation might be that the lip-rounding of the ვ is lingering past the end of the consonant and is spilling over into the following vowel. When ე is pronounced with rounded lips, it would sound something like French eu or German ö — a sound that doesn't officially exist in either Georgian or English, and which could easily be heard in different ways by speakers of different languages. Thus, the actual pronunciation of საქართველო in rapid speech could be closer to საქართვöლო; Georgian speakers would respond to this rounded front vowel as an allophone of ე — but when I hear it, my head may be classifying the ვö combination as something closer to უ. A speaker of a non-rhotic dialect of English (unlike myself) might mis-hear the word as საქართვurლო ("ur" as in RP "fur" or "purr") for similar reasons. Richwales (talk) 23:16, 12 September 2008 (UTC) Richwales (talk) 00:54, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Richwales, I thought about your explanation, perhaps it's really your english-atuned head hears is as you describe, but for me there is no საქართველო pronounced as sakartulo by any georgian, About german ö and french eu, I'm quiet used to hear german speech and I speak fluently french (I live in France since 10 years) and I can't agree that georgian ე can be similar to tham in any pronounciation. For my georgian-atuned head this sounds are some variation of ო. Georgian ვე is quiet stable in prononciation in whole georgian (excepted ingiloan which is influnced by azery), in differrence with ვი wich changes in some dialects in უ (შვილო => შულო), ვა giving ო (თვალი => თოლი)--წკაპო (talk) 08:28, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I've been watching a Moambe broadcast (probably originally aired around September 3 — I appear to be seeing them about ten days after the fact), in which a reporter is reading what I assume is some government announcement or press release. I identified a couple of occurrences of "საქართველოს ტერიტორია", and I've been playing a short segment over and over again, and also slow-motioning it so I can watch the speaker's lips (after having identified some correlations between the sounds he's making and the movements of his head, face, and body).

As this reporter pronounces the word საქართველოს, I can clearly see his lips closing up right after the თ, but as best I can tell, his lips do not open up and spread out as you would expect them to for the subsequent ე (though his lips do open up a bit for the ო, and they open up even more for the ე in ტერიტორია).

And as far as I can tell from listening to this short segment again and again, there seems to be only one sound of any kind between the ვ and the ლ of this reporter's pronunciation of საქართველოს. To my ears, this vowel sounds nothing at all like /ɛ/, though I'm not yet sure exactly what it is. If I can manage to run this (and/or pronunciations from other speakers) through Baudline, I'll let you know what I come up with. Richwales (talk) 07:05, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, check this out. Here is an audio file with about 1 minute and 20 seconds from the Moambe broadcast I mentioned earlier — presumably more than enough for native speakers to tell whether either the female news anchor or the male reporter has any significant regional accent. Here is a shorter excerpt (just over one second), taken 28 seconds into the first audio sample, with the male reporter saying the phrase "საქართველოს ტერიტორია". And here is a spectral graph of the second audio file, which I produced using the Baudline program and combined with my attempt to locate the individual sounds on the graph.

Someone else might want to do a more detailed formant analysis of this graph, but it seems evident that the ე and ო in საქართველოს are almost identical, and the ო in ტერიტორია is slightly different (and the ე is completely different) from these other two vowels. I'm not sure how to explain this, but at least this should hopefully show I'm not "hearing things". Any additional thoughts at this point from native speakers? Richwales (talk) 06:45, 15 September 2008 (UTC) Richwales (talk) 06:55, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

And not having too much else to do at the moment :-}, I used SoX's tempo effect to stretch out the "საქართველოს ტერიტორია" audio clip by a factor of 10. (It's 10 times as long, but the pitches are the same as in the original.) The MP3 file is here. It's choppy due to artifacts of the lengthening process, but you should be able to hear the different vowels a lot more clearly since everything is so much slower than in real life. Richwales (talk) 04:52, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I had a long Skype conversation with Tskapo about this and other issues earlier today. Based on what he and others have said, my tentative conclusion at the moment is that what I've been hearing and asking about here is probably a matter of allophones of a single phoneme. It might be the case that, in rapid speech, the ე in საქართველს may indeed be mutating into a central and/or rounded vowel under the influence of the surrounding back/rounded ვ and ო — but if this is what's happening, it's perceived by Georgian native speakers as a very subtle thing (or, more likely, not perceived at all) — and in any case, it's not something that happens in careful speech.

This is by no means a unique phenomenon, of course. I've encountered cases involving other languages (including French, Spanish, German, and Romanian) where sounds considered to be utterly distinct by speakers of one language are "heard" as being equivalent (and even indistinguishable) by speakers of another language. A detailed phonetic analysis of Georgian would be interesting, I'm quite sure, but I'll have to concede it's way beyond the scope of this article. Richwales (talk) 04:13, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

They are postvelar not velar nor uvular

The academic sources quoted here in discussion list the fricatives as postvelar, not velar nor uvular. If you no not have academic sources to back your claims, please do not make edits as this is original research. azalea_pomp

Azalea pomp is right about "ხ" and "ღ" being post-velar. For confirmation see Aronson, 16. Granted, Aronson is generally considered weak on phonetics (and justly so in my opinion), but here he is right. Professional Georgian language teachers correct Russian speakers (such as myself) when they pronounce ხ and ღ in the velar position, telling them to pronounce it further back in the throat. To classify these fricatives as velar or uvular is wrong; they are pronounced between these two positions. Unfortunately, this means that the current IPE symbols are incorrect, as per the discussion under point 10. But since IPA doesn't include specifically post-velar consonants, I think that it's fair to use the velar IPE symbols--at least that is what I have seen in academic writing. As for the comment under point 10 that states that there is actually more diversity in these consonants' pronunciation: that is true, but such pronunciations are not standard Georgian. On a side note, please everyone be more respectful when deciding to revert--at the very least explain why a revert is necessary. --Treemother199 01:59, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Although there are not symbols specifically for the postvelar, the symbol for retracted works just fine. The column is linked to that article. For some languages of the Northwest of the United States and Southwest of Canada, the underline is used for the postvelar as the article on retraction states. azalea_pomp

While I wasn't the one who made the original revert, I quote from George Hewitt's 1995 Georgian: a structural reference grammar (John Benjamins: Amsterdam): "The two back-fricatives have both a fronted dorso-velar and a backed dorso-uvular articulation depending on the phonetic environment in which they occur" (Hewitt 1995:21-22). In Marika Butskhrikidze's book The Consonant Phonotactics of Georgian, she (a native Georgian speaker, no less) also quite happily gives the fricatives as "velar" (2002:87). Winfried Boeder, in his article in Lingua (number 115 (2005), volume 1-2, pp. 5-89) also classifies the phonemes as "velar" without adding any further comment. In fact, Aronson is the only source I've come across to consistently refer to the phonemes only as "postvelar", and I think simply using Aronson's classification (which seems to be well and truly in the minority) without adding some notes on the obvious uncertainty in the academic literature is a gross oversimplification. Thefamouseccles 00:42, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Point well taken. I think Hewitt's classification, as more of a range from velar to uvular is most accurate, while classifications as purely velar seem too casual. The Butskhrikidze piece is really interesting reading, by the way, available in full here. --Treemother199 19:58, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I see no problem with using either the velar /ɣ x/ or the uvular /ʁ χ/ symbols to symbolise the phonemes, especially since transcriptions are intended to be phonemic, not phonetic. It'd be like arguing that /θ/ is inaccurate in English because it symbolises the dental, not the interdental (as found in many forms of English) fricative. So long as a full explanation of the phonetic reality is given, either is reasonable, I think. And as for the Butskhrikidze paper (I also enjoyed it), I actually already have the digital version you refer to. *blush* Thefamouseccles 12:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

LINGUISTIC CLASSIFICATION GEORGIAN / KARTVELIAN LANGUAGE

It MUST be said on this page that Georgian=Kartvelian=South Caucasian Linguistic Family forms it's own Super Family that is on higher level than for example Indo-European Family. There many tree charts that can be posted here, take this one for example : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nostratic_tree.PNG Thanks, ````

No thanks. The Nostratic theory is just a vague theory and is not proven. It's in fact rejected by most linguists. Relationship with other language families has not been attested for the South Caucasian language family. And I think the theory is not worth mentioning here, because then you could claim relationship to "Nostratic" for almost every language in the world (and in Wikipedia). — N-true 06:46, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely agreed -- Indo-European and South Caucasian should be presented as co-equally top-level families. But, actually, the fact that some (older, minority) scholarship does group all the Caucasian families together in a genetic category should be mentioned -- over the howls of the Georgians who don't like being associated with their neighbors in any way : ) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.149.60 (talk) 09:19, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Nino Burjanadze Article

This Georgian Language article describes / i u ɑ / vowels.

The Nino Burjanadze article has her name in IPA with [ ɪ ʊ a ].

Is that allophonic, or dialectical, or an error?

Also if a Georgian speaker could visit Ms Burjanadze and put some syllable-division marks (period/full stop) and (if such exists in Georgian) stressed syllable marks into her IPA I'd appreciate it.

75.36.153.236 (talk) 10:04, 29 November 2008 (UTC)Thanks

Corrected. Richwales (talk) 01:05, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Accent?

Does Georgian have any kind of an accent system ( I mean stress accent or pitch accent, not diacritical marks)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.149.60 (talk) 09:27, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

My (very limited) understanding is that spoken Georgian has little or no stress or pitch accent. There may be a slight stress on the initial syllables of words, and some secondary stresses within long words, but linguists have not reached any consensus on this. I think the best thing to do, when showing the IPA pronunciation of Georgian words, is probably not to include any indications of stress at all — similarly to what is commonly done when transcribing the pronuncation of French. Richwales (talk) 01:23, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I remember having heard that Georgian has its main stress on the antepenultimate syllable, but I don't remember where I got that info from. No idea if it's true or not. — N-true (talk) 02:12, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Contains Virus

Georgian Website / Portal with info on Georgian culture and language http://www.kartuli.com/ Contains Virus. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.241.249.146 (talk) 07:37, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

More information

Someone able... here is something important to add this article http://www.armazi.demon.co.uk/georgian/files/quick_facts.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.113.79.25 (talk) 11:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

My Proposal

Perhaps we could add the list of Georgian authors and their works:

“ External Links

• Georgian authors and their works, National Parliamentary Library of Georgia

”

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Berdiau (talk • contribs) 09:51, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Affricate consonants

I think ipa recommend the use of ligature or tie bar for affricates? It's incorrect in this article? --Grenadine (talk) 21:30, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Typo in name

{{editsemiprotected}}

Ther is a typo in the name. the name Kakakber should be Kakhaber

The football player Kakhaber Tskhadadze

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Gvassalia (talk • contribs) 16:42, 1 December 2009

Done Welcome and thanks for improving the article. Celestra (talk) 19:00, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Stress accent in Georgian?

The following is WP:OR and not suitable "as is" for inclusion in the article, though I think I may be able to find published sources for some of it.

I've been studying Georgian in my spare time for the last couple of years, and my impression at this point is that there is a very slight stress on the first syllable of most words. One telltale indication of the existence of an initial stress is that words/phrases beginning with a vowel usually seem to have a glottal stop before the initial vowel.

A possible reason why people (even experts) seem to be confused and contradict each other regarding the existence / position of stress in Georgian may be that the default pitch contour on a Georgian word/phrase appears to start "low" and slowly rise in pitch through the word/phrase. (I find this more obvious in women's speech, which seems to have a wider pitch range in general than men's speech.) The ending portion of a Georgian statement, by contrast, normally involves a falling pitch contour. This pattern is reminiscent of (though not as obvious as) the prosody of most of the languages of India — and English speakers from India are frequently mis-heard by native English speakers who think they are misplacing the stress in their words (because the normal English pattern involves a higher pitch on a stressed syllable, and a pattern involving low pitch on stressed syllables is unusual and confusing).

As I said, I know I need to go back through material I've read and find some citable sources before trying to incorporate any of the above in the article — but if this rings a bell in anyone else's head and they manage to beat me to it in the source-finding game, by all means go ahead. Richwales (talk · contribs) 23:31, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Link to Howar Aronson's grammar

I can't access this file, is it just me or is the file no longer available? Apokrif (talk) 15:01, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Answer: it was just me. Apokrif (talk) 18:25, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation details for ყ?

Can anyone offer (or supply a source for) more detailed information regarding the uvular ejective (ყ)? In particular, how different is it (to native Georgian speakers) from a glottal stop? I've been listening to a children's show on GPB's First Channel — an episode of "სიზმარვიზია" originally broadcast on December 25 (go here — or if that doesn't work, go to the show's archives and look for the show marked 25.12.2008). This particular episode (entitled "ბაყაყი ბაყო", about a frog who becomes a weather reporter) is chock-full of ყ's, but I'm having a hard time hearing any real difference between the ყ's and "ordinary" glottal stops. I understand (from reading descriptions of ყ) that it's not supposed to be the same as a glottal stop at all — and I was under the impression that ყ was supposed to be a rough, raspy sound — but that isn't what the ყ's in this program sound like to me. Comments, anyone? Richwales (talk) 02:02, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Update to my earlier comment: Is it possible that ყ is a uvular fricative combined with a glottal closure? I could imagine describing what I'm hearing as being similar to a glottal stop spoken through a constricted throat. But there only seems to be one complete, 100% closure involved — in the glottis. I'm not even sure it's physically possible to make an ejective sound with the tiny airspace between a closed glottis and a closed uvular region; when I've tried to perform such a feat, the result sounds very much like კ, and not at all like ყ. Richwales (talk) 23:37, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

The uvular fricative realisation is indeed possible and widespread in Georgian; Marika Butskhrikidze's book The Consonant Phonotactics of Georgian consistently transcribes the Georgian ყ as /χ’/, presumably for phonotactic reasons. However, it's definitely possible from a physiological point of view to make a true ejective uvular stop (you don't need a very big cavity to make an ejective sound - I can actually produce an epiglottal ejective if I try). In fact, for some reason /q’/ is unusually common worldwide. Uvular ejective stops are found in languages as widely separated as Abkhaz, Itelmen, Eyak and Quechua, and in Tlingit there's even a minimal contrast between uvular ejective stops and fricatives (note the Tlingit minimal pair q’aːn dolphin vs. χ’aːn fire). Thefamouseccles (talk) 01:59, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Interpunct

The article Interpunct says that the Georgian language uses · (middot) as a comma. Is it true? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 18:04, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

No, it's not true. –BruTe ^Talk 10:05, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

/f/ in Georgian?

Someone just added the following note to the list of consonants: "/f/ is found in some words of Greek and other foreign origin. Today it is written with ფ, which is normally used for /pʰ/...." Is this correct? It was my understanding that in foreign loan words that originally had /f/, the original /f/ is written with ფ and pronounced as /pʰ/ (i.e., normally, not as /f/). And further, that /f/ exists in Georgian only as an allophone of ვ occurring before unvoiced consonants. Comments from any native speakers or advanced students of the language? Richwales (talk · contribs) 01:55, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I reverted it back for now, pending confirmation from a native speaker. I did find this clip [5] which gives mixed results; "Friedrich" is definitely pronounced with a /pʰ/, but the solfege is definitely sung "fa" and not /pʰa/. BGManofID (talk) 04:38, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I am native speaker and I can tell you that there is no /f/ in Georgian Language. Every foreign word that is written with "f" or "ph" and is read as "f" is written with ფ /pʰ/. for example: fan ფანი /pʰani/, solfeggio სოლფეჯიო /sɔlpʰɛd͡ʒiɔ/, pharmaceutic ფარმაცევტული /pʰarmat͡sɛvtʼuli/ etc. But there was an letter ⟨ჶ⟩ (fi) in old Georgian. It was borrowed to represent the phoneme /f/ in loanwords from Latin and Greek such as ჶილოსოჶია (filosofia, 'philosophy'). Its name and shape derive from Greek. It was addition to the Georgian alphabet used to represent sound not present in Georgian proper. In modern Georgian, ⟨ფ⟩ /pʰ/ replaces fi. So there is no /f/ sound in modern Georgian. I hope I could help you. ენრიკო 88.64.69.156 (talk) 18:50, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

gvprtskvni

Unless you're aware that there is a consonant in Georgian that is romanised with the digraph ts, you might be misled that this word actually begins with nine consonants rather than eight. I think we'd better use the ISO 9984 standard, which allocates a single Latin character for each Georgian letter. By the way, I think having audio recordings of the words გვფრცქვნი and გვბრდღვნი would be a wonderful addition. --Theurgist (talk) 03:54, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Alphabets

Someone needs to explain what the different alphabets are, what they mean, etc. Am I correct in saying Georgian has five different equivalent alphabets? If no, improve the article! 203.218.86.162 12:22, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Good point; I'll inspect the article and resolve any unclarity I find. I hope you come back to check soon. (I'll do this sometime this weekend.) ACW 00:49, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I think I clarified it somewhat. Please let us know if it's understandable now. ACW 04:01, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Mxedruli (the modern Georgian alphabet) - is being translated as 'military'. but I would say 'cavalry' is more adequate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gogacho (talk • contribs) 20:59, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Language Family

Just wandering: isn't Georgian a Semitic Language? The Alphabet looks somewhat similar to Hebrew and Arabic.

No, it's not related to Semitic, Georgian is South Caucasian. The similarity in the alphabets is probably a coincidence, as – as far as I know – the Georgian alphabet did not develop on its own (as the Hebrew and Arabic alphabet did) but was developped by someone, see Georgian alphabet for more information. In fact, I don't see any similarity between the Georgian and the Hebrew/Arabic alphabets at all. — N-true 11:33, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

A similar writing system doesn't make a language similar to another language that uses a similar writing system. For example, many non-Slavic languages use Cyrillic; or Urdu and Farsi are Indo-European but use a modified Arabic script. --129.97.58.55 16:19, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

And it's been pointed out that Kiswahili, like Latin, is one of the few languages that can be written in the Latin alphabet w/o diacritics. As can English nearly all the time. GeorgeTSLC (talk) 19:28, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Sentence structure??

The article currently says the following: "Georgian has a subject-verb-object primary sentence structure, but the word order is not as strict as in some Germanic languages such as English. Not all word orders are acceptable, but it is also possible to encounter the structure of subject-object-verb." Is this correct? From what little I've read up to this point, it was my understanding that "subject-object-verb" is by far the most common, neutral word order in Georgian. Richwales (talk) 06:05, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

The all of the above is true (including what your understanding is). The article did not refer to "neutral" word order. - Alsandro · T · w:ka: Th · T 05:41, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

So what is meant by "primary sentence structure" here? Most of the relevant google hits for that phrase seem to be for this article, or quoting it...Butsuri (talk) 21:55, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Not any more. And I see the phrase as clearly meaning the structure from which other structures can be seen as divergent, often for rhetorical reasons. (I know essentially nothing of Georgian, I do know something of linguistics.) GeorgeTSLC (talk) 19:34, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Transcription

It is annoying that Romanizations of Georgian are hard to read because there are multiple schemes, with the same character (e.g. <c>) having different values in different schemes. It would be good if Wikipedia adopted a single, standard Romanization, with symbols chosen so that their sound values are intuitive to speakers of most languages. A scheme I suggest (<> denote orthography, including Romanizations or proposed Romanizations):

/a ɛ i ɔ u/ = <a e i o u>
/m n b d g f v s z x h r l/: as in IPA
/ɢ/: not sure, perhaps <c>, a similar symbol whose IPA value is also a dorsal plosive (other dorsal plosives include the very familiar [k g])

/p^h t^h k^h q^h/ =

/pʼ tʼ kʼ qʼ/ = <pʼ tʼ kʼ qʼ>
/t͡s t͡sʼ d͡z t͡ʃ t͡ʃʼ d͡ʒ/ = <ts tsʼ dz tš tšʼ dž>
/ʃ ʒ/ = <š ž>
/ɣ/: not sure, perhaps <gh>

In the romanization, I favor <ts> rather than <c> for /t͡s/ because pronunciations of <c> vary a lot from language to language, and the IPA pronunciation of <c> is roughly as in cute. <c> = /d͡ʒ/ is undesirable because about the only languages that have <c> for /d͡ʒ/ are Turkish and Azerbaijani. For /d͡ʒ/ i favor <dž> rather than <j> because <j>, again, has many different pronunciations in different languages, while <dž> = /d͡ʒ/ follows automatically from <d> = /d/ + <ž> = /ʒ/; <ž> = /ʒ/ is intuitive to anyone whose native language has <z> = /z/ (most languages). However, I am willing to suggest <c> for /ɢ/ because <c> is the only reasonable one-letter symbol easily available; I think digraphs representing single sounds (except for affricates and diphthongs written with the symbols of the component sounds, phonemically long vowels written double, etc., digraphs which are inherently logical), are ugly; they go against the phonetic principle.

Furthermore, i feel that speakers of different languages should use the same, standardized Romanization (such as Pīnyīn for Mandarin Chinese) for a given non-Latin-alphabet language, such as Georgian. If not, confusion can result:

A French Jesuit, in a letter, relates how the Chinese tones cause a problem for understanding:

I will give you an example of their words. They told me chou signifies a book: so that I thought whenever the word chou was pronounced, a book was the subject. Not at all! Chou, the next time I heard it, I found signified a tree. Now I was to recollect, chou was a book, or a tree. But this amounted to nothing; chou, I found, expressed also great heats; chou is to relate; chou is the Aurora; chou means to be accustomed; ... I should not finish, were I to attempt to give you all its significations.

(Chinese as a foreign language #“Difficulty” #“The tones”)

When I first read this, chou confused me because I thought it referred to Pīnyīn <chou> /t͡ʂ^hɤu/. However, I eventually figured out that it represented Pīnyīn <shu> /ʂu/. I may have figured this out easily only because I had studied both French and Chinese: I knew that in French <ch> = /ʃ/ ([ʂ] and [ʃ] both roughly as in ship) and <ou> = /u/; and I knew Chinese shū ‘book’ and shù ‘tree’.

This illustrates the need for standardization. I recommend that Wikipedia choose a standard Romanization of Georgian and explain on Georgian language and Help:IPA for Georgian that this is Wikipedia's standard.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 11:30, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Precisely because of your points, the ISO's scheme for assigning international transliteration standards isn't the best. I think there should be different Romanizations of a non-Latin script depending on the language for whose speakers' study it is being Romanized. In our case, we might choose something that reflects current pronunciation conventions. Pokajanje|Talk 21:26, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Definite Particles in Relative Clauses

I added a at the following claim: 'In relative clauses, however, it is possible to establish the meaning of the definite article through use of some particles.' I've been wondering where this claim came from, and I believe I may have found it. On page 421 of Howard I. Aronson and Dodona Kiziria's Georgian Language and Culture: A Continuing Course it says that ის can be "translated by the English definite article [...] or is best left untranslated." If this is the source, I think the contributor may have read too much into it as the book doesn't actually say it marks definiteness, and if it does mark definiteness, since we're talking about a demonstrative here, wouldn't the definiteness be independent from the type of clause it is used in? E.g., ის სახლი that house would be definite even without a relative clause. In any event it would be nice to get it sourced. Friendly Cave (talk) 13:26, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 August 2014

Please add {{Wikivoyage|Georgian phrasebook|Georgian|a phrasebook}} to the external links. It will add a link to the phrasebook for the language at Wikivoyage. Thanks. 130.88.141.34 (talk) 09:10, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Done --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 10:05, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Vocabulary, the second paragraph

I don't know about Georgian, but as Indo-European examples go, this article gets them all wrong. 46.186.35.242 (talk) 23:18, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 March 2015

Please add "(in Iran)" behind Fereydan. Like Imerkhevi and Saingilo in Turkey and Azerbaijan respectively, it's a region outside the Georgian nation where Georgian language is natively spoken. 84.241.199.232 (talk) 00:19, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Done Stickee (talk) 05:21, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Allophone of /v/

According to Butskhrikidze & van de Weijer (2003) /v/ has the three allophones [v ɸ w]. It might be a good idea to include this in the phonology section of the article? Nessimon (talk) 22:30, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 November 2015

The word გვბრდღვნი is not gvbrdgvni, but gvbrdghvni. "GH" is the correct sound of the letter ღ. Please change it in the article. 177.103.13.3 (talk) 17:26, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Done a boat that can float! (happy holidays) 14:49, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Mother and father

I don't know Georgian, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that the Georgian words for mother and father are "reversed" from the pattern observed in most Indo-European and many non-Indo-European languages. As I remember, father is mama and mother is dada or tata or papa (I can't remember which). Anyway, could someone who knows Georgian please add the correct information to the article Mama and papa? Thanks! --Angr/_comhrá 06:51, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Done. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 19:48, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In Georgian father is mama and mother is deda. Levan Z. Urushadze, 18 January 2006

Moreover: the word papa (which in many languages means father) in Georgian means grandfather. Sincerely, David Managadze.

The word "papa" (პაპა) means "grandfather" in Eastern Georgian dialects. In Western Georgian dialects the word for "grandfather" is "babua" (ბაბუა). --Mebop (talk) 21:17, 15 December 2015 (UTC)