Georgian (, , ) is the most widely spoken Kartvelian language; it also serves as the literary language or lingua franca for speakers of related languages. It is the official language of Georgia and the native or primary language of 87.6% of its population. Its speakers today amount to approximately four million. Georgian is written in its own unique alphabet.
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 2700 years ago. Svan is a more distant relative that split off much earlier, perhaps 4000 years ago.
Dialects
Standard Georgian is 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, a certain 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
On the left are IPA symbols, and on the right are the corresponding letters of the modern Georgian alphabet, which is essentially phonemic.
Opinions differ on the aspiration of , as it is non-contrastive. Opinions differ on how to classify // and //; classifies them as post-velar, argues that they range from velar to uvular according to context. The uvular ejective stop is commonly realised as an uvular ejective fricative [] but it can also be [], [], or [], they are in free variation. // is realised as an alveolar tap [] though [] occurs in free variation. // is pronounced as velarized [] before back vowels, it is pronounced as [] in the environment of front vowels. // has the following allophones. word-initially, intervocally and word-finally, it is realized as a bilabial fricative [] or []. before voiceless consonants, it is realized as [] or []. post-consonantally, it is realized as [] labialization on preceding consonants. In initial positions, /b, d, ɡ/ are pronounced as weakly voiced [b̥, d̥, ɡ̊] In word-final positions, /b, d, ɡ/ are devoiced to [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ].
Former () has merged with (), leaving only the latter.
The glottalization of the ejectives is rather light, and in fact Georgian transliterates the tenuis stops in foreign words and names with the ejectives. In many romanization systems, it is not marked for transcriptions such as ejective p, t, ts, ch, k and q, against aspirated p‘, t‘, ts‘, ch‘ and k‘ (as in transcriptions of Armenian).
The coronal occlusives (, not necessarily affricates) are variously described as apical dental, laminal alveolar, and "dental".
Vowels
Per Canepari, the main realizations of the vowels are [], [], [], [], [].
Aronson describes their realizations as [i̞], [], [] (but "slightly fronted"), [], [u̞].
Shosted transcribed one speaker's pronunciation more-or-less consistently with [], [], [], [], [].
Allophonically, [] may be inserted to break up consonant clusters, as in .