Georgian – kartuli ena

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Today´s post is about the Georgian language, which is called ქართული ენა kartuli ena in Georgian and belongs to the Kartvelian group of languages and is spoken by about 4.3 million people. In my opinion, the Georgian alphabet is one of the most beautiful scripts in the world. The alphabet has no capital letters and consists of 33 letters, of which 5 are vowels and 28 are consonants. The script is written from left to right. The Georgian language is an agglutinative language, which means that verbs and words are formed by adding prefixes and suffixes to a root. For example, the root kartv refers to ‘Georgia’, so Sakartvelo means ‘Georgia’, kartuli the ‘Georgian language’ and kartveli a ‘Georgian person’.

Here some basic phrases to give you an impression of this not so well-known language:

გამარჯობათ [gamarjobat]   Hello!

გმადლობთ [gmadlobt]  Thank you!

ნახვამდის [nakhvamdis]  Goodbye!

მაპატიეთ [mapatiet]  I’m sorry!

გეთაყვა [getaqva] please

ჩემი სახელია … [chemi sakhelia….]  My name is…

800px-Svaneti,_georgia