COURSE OVERVIEW
The following pre-departure language audios and an accompanying script will briefly introduce you to the basics of the Georgian Language, as well as give you some insights on two of the core cultural values of Georgia - folk dances and supra (feast). Close familiarity with this introductory language course and especially the prior-to arrival knowledge of the alphabet will enable you to quicker grasp the Georgian Language upon your arrival in Georgia.
For those of you who are interested in the history of the Georgian Language, here is the brief overview of its development and current use: Georgian language is one of the oldest languages in the world. It is a state language of Georgia and is spoken as a native language only by Georgian people. Historians and linguists still hold an open debate on when exactly the Georgian alphabet was developed. It is generally believed that the Georgian alphabet and script was created in the IV century B.C. Georgian Language belongs to the family of Caucasian Languages to the group of Kartvelian (Georgian) Languages. A number of Soviet specialists had claimed that there is a genetic relationship between the Caucasian Language groups, however most linguists nowadays consider that Georgian is a unique Caucasian language that is not related to IndoEuropean or Semantic languages.
Besides state Georgian Language, Mingrelian and Svan languages are also spoken in the regions of Mingrelia and Svaneti in Georgia. The dialects of Georgian can be divided in eastern and western groups; a total of 17 dialects can be identified.
PROGRAMS THAT USED THIS LANGUAGE
Georgia: 2001-present
PROGRAM SECTORS
Georgia: English Education, Business, Community Development
Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus. Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad. It is the literary language for all regional subgroups of the Georgian ethnos, including those who speak other Kartvelian (South Caucasian) languages: Svans, Mingrelians, and the Lazs. Judaeo-Georgian is spoken by an additional 20,000 in Georgia and 65,000 elsewhere (primarily 60,000 in Israel). Georgian shares a common ancestral language with Svan and Mingrelian/Laz, and is believed to have become distinct from all of its relatives in the first millennium BC. Based on the degree of change, linguists (e.g. Klimov, T. Gamkrelidze, G. Machavariani) conjecture that the earliest split occurred in the second millennium BC or earlier, separating Svan from the other languages. Megrelian and Laz diverged from Georgian roughly a thousand years later. The earliest allusion to spoken Georgian may be a passage of the Roman grammarian Marcus Cornelius Fronto in the 2nd century AD: Fronto imagines the Iberians addressing the emperor Marcus Aurelius in their incomprehensible tongue.
Georgian is spoken in: Georgia
Georgian is also called: Common Kartvelian, Georgian, Gruzin, Gruzinski, Kartuli
