Language Reference Guide For Georgian

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1) Georgian nouns do not distinguish gender or class (with the exception of an occasional weak distinction between animate and inanimate). The pronouns that reference these nouns can, therefore, refer to either males or females (or, indeed, to non-animate entities). To indicate that the subject of a sentence is male or female, the words “this man” or “this woman” have to be added.
2) There are 7 cases for the nouns, with which adjectives agree.
3) The eb-plural is the usual; the n-plural is used in some fixed phrases and for a limited number of stylistic purposes. The plural forms are suffixes, inserted as the penultimate syllable.

Inanimate plural nouns have the verb in the singular.

ADJECTIVES

Adjectives usually precede the nouns which they qualify. Their stems have the same endings as those of nouns, but they do not have to agree in terms of gender.

VERBS

1) The average number of morphemes (that is, basic grammatical units) per word is higher than in most European languages due to the process of agglutination (that is, word formation through combining sequences of elements, each with a distinctive role)
2) Verbs fall into a number of contrasting classes, based on their grammatical behaviour and roles
3) The familiar tenses (past, present, future, etc.) are replaced by what are known as ‘screeves’, which are characterized by more than just differences in the time reference
4) The verb can include references to the subject and the direct and indirect objects, (polypersonalism) as, for example, in the translation of ‘I sent it to him’, which is a single word in Georgian
5) Indirect objects can be marked as benefactors, possessors, and the like; this is known as 'version'
6) Subjects and objects are indicated in a more complex way through case marking
7) There is a more precise distinction of direction with verbs of motion than in many of the more familiar languages, using verb prefixes known as directional preverbs.

Gender: Georgian does not distinguish between male and female in ANY area of its grammar.

Articles: There are no articles ('a', 'the') in Georgian, so a Georgian noun may be translated as, for example, ‘friend’, ‘a friend’, or ‘the friend’, as the context requires.

One letter words: There are none in Georgian.

Accents: There are no accents in Georgian.

Capitalisation: There is no difference between the upper and lower case of the Georgian alphabet.

Suffixes: Georgian uses postpositions in place of the English prepositions ('on', 'for', etc.). These may be in the form of either a postfix attached to the noun, or a separate word which follows it. The case of the nouns is determined by the choice of postposition.

Section Two - Punctuation

Punctuation is generally used in the same way as in English.

1. Full stops: Full stops are used as in English and there is flexibility for personal choice I, for example, titles, etc.

2. Inverted commas: Inverted commas normally used, as in English. Other variations can also be used – usage is determined by personal choice rather than by context.

3. Apostrophes: These are not used in Georgian.

4. Colons, semi-colons and ellipsis: These are all used in a similar way to English.

5. Brackets: These are also used in a similar way to English.

Section Three – Measurements and Abbreviations

1. Measurements: In general, Georgian uses the Metric system, apart from internationally accepted imperial measurements used for computer monitors, inner diameter of pipes/tubes, nautical miles.

A comma is used to denote decimals. A full stop or a gap is used to separate thousands in 4-digit numbers.

Time would be written as follows:

10.30 am = 10.30
Noon = 12.00
4.30 pm = 16.30
Midnight = 24.00

Dates are written as follows:

20 tebervali 2004
20/02/2004 or 20.02.2004

No gap between a figure and measurement abbreviation.
No space before % symbol.

No currency symbol is used for Georgian Lari. The word follows the number. Symbols for other currencies are not used. Local Georgian abbreviations used, following the number.

2. Abbreviations:

No. = №
e.g. = no equivalent in Georgian
1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. = I, II, III etc. or written in full
Mr. = Batoni - no abbreviation
Mrs. = Kalbatoni - no abbreviation
Messrs. = no equivalent
Miss = no equivalent
Dear Sir/Madam = Pativtsemulo Batono/Kalbatono (Vocative case)

Except for technical and scientific texts (where measurement abbreviations may be used as in English), all abbreviations will probably be in the Georgian script and will consequently appear unfamiliar.

Section Four - Hyphenation

Hyphens are used for splitting words over lines between syllables. Hyphenated words are fairly common.

Prefixes and suffixes are joined to the main word and not separated by a hyphen.

There are no set rules for long or short dashes - it is a matter of personal choice – although long dashes are used for bullet points.

Section Five - Miscellaneous Peculiarities

Surnames are usually given after the first name when addressing the person. In written texts, either word order is permissible.

Bold and italics are used in the same way as in English.

Section Six - Geographic Distribution

Georgian, together with its sister languages Megrel and Svan, form the Kartvelian (South Caucasian) language family. No relationship between the members of this family and any other language has been satisfactorily demonstrated. There are several languages spoken in the Georgian Republic, including Abkhazian (uses Cyrillic alphabet), Megrel (spoken only), Svan (spoken only), Ossetian (uses Cyrillic alphabet), plus several dialects.
Previously there were two state languages in Georgia: Georgian and Russian. Since separation from the USSR, Georgian is now the only state language for official legal, financial, etc. texts.

For client purposes, all material should be translated into Georgian, as this is the common language (spoken and written) for all inhabitants of the Republic. The older generation are accustomed to reading in Russian, too, but for business purposes it would not be advisable to rely on this. This is for political reasons and to avoid any misunderstandings. All legally valid documents must be in Georgian.

Section Seven - Character Set

Modern Georgian is written with the Mkhedruli alphabet:

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