The Georgian Language – Beautiful and Complicated
The Georgian language is a beautiful and complicated language with a fascinating
history and origin. Taking into account that it is old and some words cannot be directly
translated into another language, translation is a difficult task for any linguist to
accomplish.
The Georgian language is one of the oldest in the world that is still spoken today. The
origin of the Georgian alphabet comes from a script that consists of three alphabets with
‘Mkhedruli’ being the most modern one that is used today and consists of 33 letters. The
language is difficult to learn & translate, mostly due to its unique verb system.
Georgian is only spoken by about 4 million people as a first and second language, with
the majority of Georgian speakers living in the Republic of Georgia, known locally as
‘Sakartvelo’ (‘საქართველო’). Although the language is spoken by millions of people,
most of the native speakers live in or around the republic of Georgia, making
accessibility to professional linguists in Georgian along with another language a rare
treasure in the professional field.
What makes the Georgian Language so Unique?
The origin of the Georgian language is linked to King Parnavaz, and although the exact
time of his reign is not known, it is considered to be sometime in the third century BC,
making the language one of the oldest in the world. The Georgian alphabet is unique to
the Georgian language in the sense that its characters cannot be found in any other
language.
The Georgian language is also said to be one of the most difficult languages to learn.
The language has a phonetic alphabet and the letters are very different from that of any
other alphabet in the world. The alphabet consists of 33 characters each with only one
sound and has no capital letters, contrary to the alphabet of the English language which
has many different sounds for each letter. The Georgian language also has large
consonant clusters of up to eight consonants making the articulation of the language
much more difficult.
At least 88 weeks – of eight hours of study per day, are needed to become proficient in
the language when learned by a foreign language speaker, as opposed to the 44 weeks
needed to learn some easier languages.
The Georgian Language has many borrowed words and the letter ‘i’ is added to the end
of a foreign name or surname. Numerals use digits based on multiples of twenty much
like in the French language.
It has up to 18 different dialects, and is one of three languages spoken in the Republic
of Georgia. The other two languages spoken are Mengrelian, and Svan, which are
languages most commonly spoken in the Western part of Georgia.
A commonly used phrase, like the english word ‘hello’ is ‘gamarjoba’, (‘გამარჯობა’),
which directly translates to the english word ‘victory’, ties to the early wars and sudden
attacks which litters the rich history of Georgia. The word ‘goodbye’ is ‘nakhvamdis’,
(‘ნახვამდის’), which translates to ‘Until we see each other again’’ referring to the hope
that the people had for the wars to come to an end.
Where other languages will assign a gender when referring to a third person in a
conversation, the Georgian language has a gender-neutral pronoun which simply refers
to the third person as ‘that’ instead of, ‘he’ or ‘she’.
Some Georgian Words Cannot Be Translated into English
Because of the uniqueness and age of the Georgian language, many words are
exclusive to the language and cannot be directly translated into English. The language
is mostly spoken by Georgians and still holds its roots within the Caucasus with its own
alphabet, which means that the language is very specific to the region and its long
developed customs.
The word ‘Shemomentchama’ cannot be directly translated into English and means ‘I
accidentally ate the whole thing’. It refers to eating past the point of fullness because
the food is so delicious that you cannot stop yourself from eating.
Another example is the word ‘Mazeg’ which means the day after the day after tomorrow
or ‘Zeg’ which means the day after tomorrow. However, Zeg can be translated into
some other languages, for instance the Afrikaans language, where ‘zeg’ matches the
word ‘oormôre’ exactly.
The Georgian Translation Process
As stated earlier, the Georgian language is very bound to the Georgian culture, making
translation from Georgian to other languages such as English very complicated due to
the culture and traditions embedded into the language. The number system for instance
does not use the bases of 10 but rather 20. This means that when translating the
number 82 it will be ‘four-twenty and two.
The Georgian language has some challenging grammatical features, many of these
challenges exist because Georgian, together with its sister languages, forms a primary
language family that isn’t genetically related to any other language groups on the planet.
Georgian adjectives and nouns are looked at as a case system because unlike other
languages Georgian does not have prepositions like on and before. Instead Georgian
uses twelve suffixes divided into seven different cases in which the noun and adjective
must be in agreement.
Georgian also has a unique verb system, with the main feature being that it does not
have an infinitive form. This means that it is not possible to say ‘to run’ in Georgian but
you would rather use the word ‘running’ and in a sentence you would say ‘I like running’
as opposed to ‘I like to run.’
Georgian verbs also do not conjugate in the usual way, but they instead use pronoun
markers that go in the beginning or end of the verb to indicate the actor of the verb. The
part of the verb that deals with the purpose or condition of the verb will be indicated with
the suffix, the suffix ‘-de’ will indicate the hypothetical situations and the suffix ‘-e’ will
indicate the past perfective tense.
The Georgian aspects will indicate the timeframe of the verb; imperfective tenses have
no prefix while perfective tenses will have a prefix added.
The translation process will be considerably more difficult when the sentence structure
differs so greatly. It is however important to note that when someone is efficient in both
languages the process can be done with great efficiency.
Conclusion
The Georgian language is a beautiful, fascinating, and complicated language. It is also
one of the oldest languages that are still spoken today and has a very unique history
and culture embedded into the language which can be found throughout the language’s
many dialects, hidden in simple phrases such as their greetings.
Considering the uniqueness of the Georgian language, the sentence structure and the
complicated verb structure, it is easy to see why the Georgian language can be difficult
to translate. It must however be said that it can be done to perfection with the correct
linguists.
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