Georgian language

Georgian has five vocalic and 28 consonantal phonemes, including ejectives. The consonants can form very large consonant clusters (e.g. the name of the Georgian city Mtskheta, or, as an extreme example, the Georgian tongue twister "you peel us" or "you ruin us": gvprzkvnit). Each phoneme is represented by a particular Georgian letter.

Every Georgian noun in the nominative case ends with a vowel.

Emphasis

Unlike the language variants and dialects of Georgian, the stress of the literary language is very weak. In two- and three-syllable words, the stress is usually on the first syllable, and in four-syllable words - on the second syllable.

ცა (za), ხე (che), კი (ki), ხო (cho), რუ (ru), კუ (ku).

კაბა (kaba), თითი (titi), დიდი (didi), გოგო (gogo), ძუძუ (dsudsu).

გათავდა (gatawda), გადაიწვა (gadaizwa).

გაგვიწვიმდა (gagwizwimda), გამოიდარა (gamoidara), გაგვიმართლა (gagwimartla).

გაფუჭებული (gapuchebuli), გაკეთებული (gaketebuli).

მასწავლებელი (maßzawlebeli), მატარებელი (matarebeli), დამრიგებელი (damrigebeli).

ჭამა-სმა (chama-ßma), მიმოსვლა (mimoßwla), მისვლა-მოსვლა (mißwla-moßwla).

Sentence melody

Yes-no questions are - unlike in German - realized with a rising-falling intonation.

Types of sentences in Georgian

Declarative sentences

• Sample statement: Anna works as a librarian.

Interrogative sentences

interrogatives

• Sample question sentence: Does Anna live in Berlin?

interrogatives

• Sample question sentence: Where does Anna live?

Imperative sentences

Command set pattern 1

Command set pattern 2

Georgian language is characterized by both agglutination and root inflection. A distinctive feature is the absence of the grammatical gender (genus), and the noun knows neither a definite nor indefinite article.

Instead of the prepositions common in German, for example, Georgian uses postpositions, which can either stand alone or be added to the noun. A German example of a postposition is "along the river". Georgian has 7 cases (nominative, dative, genitive, instrumental, adverbial (essive and translative), vocative and ergative). The ergative occurs as a subject case with certain verb forms, namely with the aorist and optative of transitive verbs. Georgian is thus a split ergative language. As in most inflectional languages, word order is relatively free. The conjugated forms of the verb mark a reference to both the subject and the direct or indirect object of the sentence. Thus, not only are there separate forms for "I see" (vxedav), "you see" (xedav) etc., but also for "I see you" (gxedav), "I see you" (gxedavt), "you see me" (mxedav), "you see us" (gvxedav), "you see him" ((h) Xedav) etc.

While the Indo-European languages use different tenses to represent the present, past, future and possible, Georgian uses eleven so-called mzkriwi (=> rows. English spelling in grammar books = mtskrivi). They also assign a certain verb form to the time of the event, but agglutination not only changes the verb, but also the subject and object of the sentence change the case in which they stand. For example, in the forms of the present and future groups the subject is usually in the nominative case, in the forms of the aorist group partly in the nominative and partly in the ergative case (depending on the transitivity of the verb), and in the forms of the perfect group in the dative case; similarly the case of the object changes. The high number of irregularly inflected (especially suppletive) verbs is also striking. For example, the verb for "tell", which has several stems: eubneba (present tense) "he tells him", 'et'q'vis (future tense) "he will tell him", utxra (aorist) "he told him/has told him", utkvams (perfect tense) "he (obviously) told him".