Georgian ( ქართული ენა , kartuli ena , pronounced [ˈkʰartʰuli ˈena] ) is the most widely spoken Kartvelian language ; it 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 88% of its population. Its speakers today amount to approximately 3.8 million. Georgian is written with its own unique Georgian scripts , alphabetical systems of unclear origin.
57-455: Ghoresha ( Georgian : ღორეშა ) is a village in the Kharagauli district of Imereti region in western Georgia . It is known for being the birthplace of Sergo Ordzhonikidze , a leading Bolshevik and close ally of Joseph Stalin . This Georgia location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Georgian language Georgian is most closely related to
114-415: A cross and ichthys or anchor and fish, clearly attesting their Christian affiliation. These may mean that the upper-class Iberians had embraced Christianity much earlier than its "official Christianization" date. According to The Georgian Chronicles and the chronicle Conversion of Kartli , a Cappadocian woman Nino converted Queen Nana and later King Mirian III to Christianity, which led to
171-457: A vigesimal numeric system like Basque and (partially) French . Numbers greater than 20 and less than 100 are described as the sum of the greatest possible multiple of 20 plus the remainder. For example, "93" literally translates as 'four times twenty plus thirteen' ( ოთხმოცდაცამეტი , otkhmotsdatsamet’i ). One of the most important Georgian dictionaries is the Explanatory dictionary of
228-509: A Georgian monastery was founded there. During the reign of Vakhtang I , the Georgian hero-king, the head of the Georgian church received the rank of Catholicos , and the Georgian church was recognized as autocephalous by the Church of Antioch . Despite the royal enthusiasm for the new religion, and its adoption within court circles, Christianity took root slowly in the rural districts of
285-569: 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
342-665: 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 to
399-493: A cultural and historical choice with profound international implications, though his decision was not tied with Roman diplomatic initiatives. Iberia, architecturally and artistically rooted in Achaemenid culture, from its Hellenistic-era establishment to the conversion of the crown, embarked on a new multi-phased process that took centuries to complete, encompassing the entire 5th, 6th and early 7th centuries, resulting in
456-445: A hell and I don't know, how the whole world was this destroyed, or is it just for me. Let, if this is only for me to be in trouble like this, O God of Nino, enlighten the darkness and show me the place of mine and I will recognize your name, and will erect a pillar of Cross and will respect it and will build a house for me to pray, and will be obedient to Nino's faith of Rome. When at last, he called Christ, his wife's new God, for help –
513-490: A ri means 'friend'; megobrebi ( megob Ø rebi ) means 'friends', with the loss of a in the last syllable of the word stem. Georgian has seven noun cases: nominative , ergative , dative , genitive , instrumental , adverbial and vocative . An interesting feature of Georgian is that, while the subject of a sentence is generally in the nominative case and the object is in the accusative case (or dative), one can find this reversed in many situations (this depends mainly on
570-501: 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
627-399: A row, as may be seen in words like გვფრცქვნ ი gvprtskvni 'you peel us' and მწვრთნ ელი mts’vrtneli 'trainer'. Vicenik has observed that Georgian vowels following ejective stops have creaky voice and suggests this may be one cue distinguishing ejectives from their aspirated and voiced counterparts. Georgian has been written in a variety of scripts over its history. Currently
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#1732772463753684-698: A significant role in the Christianization of the kingdom, gave a strong impetus to the deepening of ties between the Georgian monarchy and the Holy Land , leading to an increasing presence of Georgians in Palestine . This is confirmed by the activities of Peter the Iberian and other pilgrims, as well as the oldest attested Georgian Bir el Qutt inscriptions found in the Judaean Desert and
741-589: A word. Georgian vowels in non-initial syllables are pronounced with a shorter duration compared to vowels in initial syllables. long polysyllabic words may have a secondary stress on their third or fourth syllable. Georgian contains many "harmonic clusters" involving two consonants of a similar type (voiced, aspirated, or ejective) that are pronounced with only a single release; e.g. ბგ ერა bgera 'sound', ცხ ოვრება tskhovreba 'life', and წყ ალი ts’q’ali 'water'. There are also frequent consonant clusters , sometimes involving more than six consonants in
798-480: Is because syllables in the language often begin with two consonants. Recordings are available on the relevant Wiktionary entries, linked to below. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights : Christianization of Georgia The Christianization of Iberia ( Georgian : ქართლის გაქრისტიანება , romanized : kartlis gakrist'ianeba ) refers to the spread of Christianity in
855-947: Is rather light, and in fact Georgian transliterates the tenuis stops in foreign words and names with the ejectives. The coronal occlusives ( /tʰ tʼ d n/ , not necessarily affricates) are variously described as apical dental, laminal alveolar, and "dental". Per Canepari, the main realizations of the vowels are [ i ], [ e̞ ], [ ä ], [ o̞ ], [ u ]. Aronson describes their realizations as [ i̞ ], [ e̞ ], [ ä ] (but "slightly fronted"), [ o̞ ], [ u̞ ]. Shosted transcribed one speaker's pronunciation more-or-less consistently with [ i ], [ ɛ ], [ ɑ ], [ ɔ ], [ u ]. Allophonically, [ ə ] may be inserted to break up consonant clusters, as in /dɡas/ [dəɡäs] . In casual speech, /iV, Vi/ sequences can be realized phonetically as [jV~i̯V, Vj~Vi̯]. Phrase-final unstressed vowels may sometimes be partially reduced. Prosody in Georgian involves stress, intonation, and rhythm. Stress
912-401: Is very weak, and linguists disagree as to where stress occurs in words. Jun, Vicenik, and Lofstedt have proposed that Georgian stress and intonation are the result of pitch accents on the first syllable of a word and near the end of a phrase. According to Borise, Georgian has fixed initial word-level stress cued primarily by greater syllable duration and intensity of the initial syllable of
969-458: The Dittionario giorgiano e italiano . These were meant to help western Catholic missionaries learn Georgian for evangelical purposes. On the left are IPA symbols, and on the right are the corresponding letters of the modern Georgian alphabet, which is essentially phonemic. Former /qʰ/ ( ჴ ) has merged with /x/ ( ხ ), leaving only the latter. The glottalization of the ejectives
1026-499: The Mkhedruli script is almost completely dominant; the others are used mostly in religious documents and architecture. Mkhedruli has 33 letters in common use; a half dozen more are obsolete in Georgian, though still used in other alphabets, like Mingrelian, Laz, and Svan. The letters of Mkhedruli correspond closely to the phonemes of the Georgian language. According to the traditional account written down by Leonti Mroveli in
1083-517: The Cross ". The king safely returned to the capital and was greeted by his "queen and the entire nation" of Kartli. He went with his army to see Nino. At the urging of Nino, the king laid the foundations of a church to commemorate his new faith, Christianity. According to the Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi , after Mirian's conversion, Nino "destroyed the image of Armazi, the god of thunder". When
1140-516: The Georgian Orthodox Church and together are called Khutsuri 'priest alphabet'. In Mkhedruli , there is no case. Sometimes, however, a capital-like effect, called Mtavruli ('title' or 'heading'), is achieved by modifying the letters so that their vertical sizes are identical and they rest on the baseline with no descenders. These capital-like letters are often used in page headings, chapter titles, monumental inscriptions, and
1197-648: The Georgian graffiti of Nazareth and Sinai . Iberia was a factor in a competitive diplomacy of the Roman and Sasanian Empires , and on occasion became a major player in proxy wars between the two empires. The kingdom shared many institutions and concepts with the neighboring Iranians, had been physically connected to the "Iranian Commonwealth" since the Achaemenid period through commerce, war or marriage. Its adoption of Christianity meant that King Mirian III made
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#17327724637531254-457: 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. The history of the Georgian language is conventionally divided into the following phases: The earliest extant references to Georgian are found in the writings of Marcus Cornelius Fronto ,
1311-424: The astronomy scholars – who maintain that there is a high possibility that the total solar eclipse of AD 319, 6 May is the exact date of the Georgian conversion, an eclipse that reached eastern Georgia, and this "eclipse hypothesis" is not new. An eclipse per model ΔT ≈7500 with solar azimuth angle being about 290° would make king and his fellow hunters – or royal entourage – witness the totality of it, but not
1368-482: The horizon . At higher elevations nearby such as where the king might have been, totality of an eclipse may indeed have been a remarkable sight. L. V. Morrison and F. R. Stephenson according to their geophysical model ΔT ≈7450±180°, do not contradict this scenario and an intriguing possibility, but it remains an open question whether the ancient and medieval written accounts are trustworthy and really based on actual facts. According to The Georgian Chronicles it
1425-457: The 11th century, the first Georgian script was created by the first ruler of the Kingdom of Iberia , Pharnavaz , in the 3rd century BC. The first examples of a Georgian script date from the 5th century AD. There are now three Georgian scripts, called Asomtavruli 'capitals', Nuskhuri 'small letters', and Mkhedruli . The first two are used together as upper and lower case in the writings of
1482-406: The 6th century that native Georgians permanently seized the highest ecclesiastical posts. Nevertheless, outsiders such as Greeks, Iranians , Armenians and Syrians continued to play a prominent role in the administration of the Georgian church. Even though Iberia officially embraced Christianity in the early 4th century, the Georgian Orthodox Church claims apostolic origin and regards Andrew
1539-475: The 6th century. Despite the tremendous diversity of the region, the Christianization process was a pan-regional and a cross-cultural phenomenon in the Caucasus , Eurasia's most energetic and cosmopolitan zones throughout the late antiquity , hard enough to place Georgians and Armenians unequivocally within any one major civilization . The Jews of Mtskheta , the royal capital of Kartli which played
1596-540: The Apostle as the founder of the Georgian church. This is also supported by some Byzantine sources. Ephrem Mtsire (11th century) later explained Saint Nino 's role as Iberia's necessary "second Christening". Archaeological artifacts confirm the spread of Christianity before the conversion of King Mirian in the 4th century. Some of the third-century burials in Georgia include Christian objects such as signet rings with
1653-411: The Christianization of the entire kingdom of Kartli and its people. The Greco-Roman historians Tyrannius Rufinus , Gelasius of Caesarea , Gelasius of Cyzicus , Theodoret , Socrates of Constantinople and Sozomen all have similar narratives of the Georgian tradition. The only major thing that differs in these Greco-Roman accounts from the Georgian tradition is Nino being an unnamed Roman captive who
1710-568: The Georgian language ( ქართული ენის განმარტებითი ლექსიკონი ). It consists of eight volumes and about 115,000 words. It was produced between 1950 and 1964, by a team of linguists under the direction of Arnold Chikobava . Georgian has a word derivation system, which allows the derivation of nouns from verb roots both with prefixes and suffixes, for example: It is also possible to derive verbs from nouns: Likewise, verbs can be derived from adjectives, for example: In Georgian many nouns and adjectives begin with two or more contiguous consonants. This
1767-540: The Zan languages ( Megrelian and Laz ) and more distantly to 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 today. Its development as a written language began with the Christianization of Georgia in the 4th century. Georgian phonology features
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1824-659: The activities of the kings and the aristocracy . King Mirian's main church-building activity in Mtskheta saw the construction of the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral , according to the Georgian tradition connected with the Seamless Robe of Jesus , brought by a pious Jew named Elias, an eyewitness of the Crucifixion of Jesus , to Mtskheta from Jerusalem in the first century. The Samtavro Monastery ,
1881-403: The character of the verb). This is called the dative construction . In the past tense of the transitive verbs, and in the present tense of the verb "to know", the subject is in the ergative case. Georgian has a rich word-derivation system. By using a root, and adding some definite prefixes and suffixes, one can derive many nouns and adjectives from the root. For example, from the root - kart -,
1938-660: The church was completed, the king sent ambassadors to the emperor Constantine the Great requesting that he send clergy to help establish the faith in the kingdom. Per Sozomen , upon hearing the news of the conversion of Iberia, "the emperor of the Romans was delighted, acceding to every request that was proffered." The foundation of the Georgian Church and the spread of the new religion in Kartli were made possible mostly by
1995-537: The church. Also, the Constantinian churches were devoted to the cult of Christian martyrs , whereas the early Georgian church had no martyrs. After the Christianization of the monarchy, the Georgians intensified their contacts with the Holy Land . Pre-Christian Iberia had a Jewish community as early as the times of Nebuchadnezzar II , and there were close and deep connections in the Iberian ideology of
2052-458: The current Mkhedruli, used for most purposes. The language has a robust grammatical framework with unique 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. No claimed genetic links between the Kartvelian languages and any other language family in
2109-460: The daylight immediately returned. The king jumped down from the horse, raised his hands up to the "eastern sky " and said: შენ ხარ ღმერთი ყოველთა ზედა ღმერთთა და უფალი ყოველთა ზედა უფალთა, ღმერთი, რომელსა ნინო იტყჳს. You are the God over all the other Gods and Lord over all the other Lords, God, who is proclaimed by Nino. After saying this, the king promised again to the new God to erect "a pillar of
2166-425: The early 4th century as a result of the preaching of Saint Nino in the ancient Georgian kingdom of Kartli , known as Iberia in classical antiquity . The then- pagan king of Iberia Mirian III declared Christianity to be the kingdom's state religion . According to Roman historian Sozomen , this led the king's "large and warlike barbarian nation to confess Christ and renounce the religion of their fathers", as
2223-454: The emergence of a strong Georgian identity. On the eve of the historic Christianization, the king and the queen were quickly acculturated Georgianized foreigners, the physical fusion of Iranian and Greek cultures. Saint Nino was also a foreigner, as were the first two chief bishops of Kartli , who were Greeks sent by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great . It was only in the first half of
2280-589: The first monarchs anywhere in the world to convert to the Christian faith. Prior to the escalation of the Armeno-Georgian ecclesiastical rivalry and the Christological controversies, their Caucasian Christianity was extraordinarily inclusive, pluralistic and flexible that only saw the rigid ecclesiological hierarchies established much later, particularly as "national" churches crystallized from
2337-498: The following words can be derived: Kart veli ('a Georgian person'), Kart uli ('the Georgian language') and Sa kart velo ('the country of Georgia'). Most Georgian surnames end in - dze 'son' (Western Georgia), - shvili 'child' (Eastern Georgia), - ia (Western Georgia, Samegrelo ), - ani (Western Georgia, Svaneti ), - uri (Eastern Georgia), etc. The ending - eli is a particle of nobility, comparable to French de , Dutch van , German von or Polish - ski . Georgian has
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2394-422: The following: AD 312, 317, 318, 320, 323, 325/6/7/8, 330/1/2/3/4/5/6/7. Once widely accepted AD 337 for Iberia's conversion, is favored nowadays by many scholars to be AD 326, possibly a "third Sunday after Easter" per John Zosimus , that was on 1 May, the year traditionally held by the Georgian Orthodox Church . Apart from the historians, Iberia's conversion is of greater interest during decades of debates, to
2451-435: The king got alone, and he walked over the hills and woods scared and terrified. He stood at one place and became desperate over his life. And when he recovered his consciousness, and decided to his heart: "So this is it, I had my god and found no joy. Let the one preached by Nino, the cross and the one that was crucified and does the healing, by his glory – isn't he powerful enough to save me from this trouble? As I am lively into
2508-482: The king's own sepulchre church, was built outside the city, however. This is reminiscent of the situation of the church buildings of Constantine the Great and his family outside of the Roman pomerium . But the sepulchre of the first Christian Georgian king was located inside the church, whereas the sepulchres for the members of the Constantinian dynasty were located in a separate imperial mausoleum near
2565-563: The kingdom. Nino and her entourage met hostility from highlanders inhabiting the southeastern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains , but ultimately, they were persuaded to surrender their idols. Resistance also arose within the Jewish community of Mtskheta. The first steps in the Christianization of Iberia's countryside occurred in the late fifth and early sixth centuries, when indigenous monastic traditions took deep root and facilitated
2622-498: The like. This is the Georgian standard keyboard layout. The standard Windows keyboard is essentially that of manual typewriters . Georgian is an agglutinative language . Certain prefixes and suffixes can be joined in order to build a verb. In some cases, one verb can have up to eight different morphemes in it at the same time. An example is ageshenebinat ('you [all] should've built [it]'). The verb can be broken down to parts: a-g-e-shen-eb-in-a-t . Each morpheme here contributes to
2679-472: The meaning of the verb tense or the person who has performed the verb. The verb conjugation also exhibits polypersonalism ; a verb may potentially include morphemes representing both the subject and the object. In Georgian morphophonology , syncope is a common phenomenon. When a suffix (especially the plural suffix - eb -) is attached to a word that has either of the vowels a or e in the last syllable, this vowel is, in most words, lost. For example, megob
2736-523: The mountains of Javakheti in June, after four months of travel. She stayed for two days at the Paravani Lake and then continued her journey towards the royal city of Mtskheta. When she reached the capital, she found herself at the pagan holiday held for the god Armazi , with King Mirian taking part in the ceremony. Nino, shocked by the event, started to pray, resulting in "severe wind" that destroyed
2793-450: The pagan statue. Later, she was approached by the attendants of Queen Nana, who was suffering from a grave illness. She was asked to cure the queen. The queen was healed immediately, and Nino converted the queen to Christianity. Hearing about the queen's healing, the king was "very surprised". He initially opposed his wife's new religion until he, too, encountered a miracle one day while hunting, riding and "looking over Uplistsikhe " through
2850-486: The polytheistic Georgians had long-established anthropomorphic idols, known as the "Gods of Kartli". The king would become the main sponsor, architect, initiator and an organizing power of all building processes. Per Socrates of Constantinople , the "Iberians first embraced the Christian faith" alongside the Abyssinians , but the exact date of the event is still debated. The kings of Georgia and Armenia were among
2907-640: 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
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#17327724637532964-469: The sacred with the holiness of Jerusalem . This Iberian fascination with Jerusalem and Zion largely predates the claims of Georgia's unprecedented "Byzantinizing" Bagrationi monarchs to have descended directly from King David . Iberia, by having a direct connection to Jerusalem, had several monasteries there already. It was in Jerusalem that Rufinus met Bacurius, and by the end of the fourth century
3021-567: The spread of Christianity into the more peripheral regions of Kartli. Sometime in the 530s or 540s, the Thirteen Assyrian Fathers arrived in Mtskheta, whose activities would result in the establishment of some sixteen monasteries and other churches across Georgia, many of whose sixth-century foundations still can be observed today. Estimates of the conversion date by historians have ranged over much of King Mirian's long reign. Foreign and Georgian scholars' proposed dates are
3078-551: The townspeople nearby. The visibility conditions for the king on the Tkhoti mountain could have been similar to the Solar eclipse of 11 July 2010 as seen at sunset from the mountainous terrain of Patagonia . During the eclipse of AD 319, observers at lower elevations near Mtskheta , would have seen the sky grow prematurely dark and then slightly brighter, without the Sun reappearing over
3135-888: The woods of Tkhoti mountain when he suddenly was surrounded by the threatening darkness of a solar eclipse . და დაშთა მეფე მარტო, და იარებოდა მთათა და მაღნართა შეშინებული და შეძრწუნებული. დადგა ერთსა ადგილსა და წარეწირა სასოება ცხოვრებისა მისისა. და ვითარცა მოეგო თავსა თჳსსა ცნობასა, და განიზრახვიდა ესრეთ გულსა თჳსსა: "აჰა ესე რა, ვხადე ღმერთთა ჩემთა და არა ვპოვე ჩემ ზედა ლხინება. აწ, რომელსა იგი ქადაგებს ნინო ჯუარსა და ჯუარცმულსა და ჰყოფს კურნებასა, მისითა მოსავობითა, არამცა ძალ ედვაა ჴსნა ჩემი ამის ჭირისაგან? რამეთუ ვარ მე ცოცხლივ ჯოჯოხეთსა შინა და არა უწყი, თუ ყოვლისა ქუეყანისათჳს იქმნა დაქცევა ესე, ანუ თუ ჩემთჳს ოდენ იქმნა. აწ, თუ ოდენ ჩემთჳს არს ჭირი ესე, ღმერთო ნინოსო, განმინათლე ბნელი ესე და მიჩუენე საყოფელი ჩემი და აღვიარო სახელი შენი, და აღვმართო ძელი ჯუარისა და თაყუანისვცე მას და აღვაშენო სახლი სალოცველად ჩემდა, და ვიყო მორჩილ ნინოსა სჯულსა ზედა ჰრომთასა. And
3192-399: 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. Standard Georgian is largely based on
3249-442: Was brought to Iberia. According to Georgian sources, Nino was a daughter of Zabilon and Susana, a family endowed with a direct but unlikely link to Jerusalem. Once, when she went to Jerusalem to see her father, she asked if anyone knew where the Seamless Robe of Jesus was located. She was told that it was kept "in the eastern city of Mtskheta , a country of Kartli [i.e. Iberia]." She decided to go to Iberia and eventually reached
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