Talk:Georgian language
From Academic Kids
I notice that Theresa Knott removed a couple of links that were added by an anonymous user. That may have been the right thing to do, but could we have some sort of explanation for why it was done? --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 16:09, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
To the user who corrected my incorrect encoding of Khutsuri and Mkhedruli, I wonder if you could add the Georgian script for Saint Mesrop Mashtots and King Farnavaz. Thanks. Hippietrail 14:47, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)
It is not unexpected that somebody removed St Mesrop Mashtots as believed inventor of the Georgian script. It may be controversial and it may be an Armenian-centric view. You may even have something to quote on it's being provably untrue. All the article states is that the invention is usually attributed to him and this is a fact:
Google search for "mashtots|mesrob|mesrop creation|creator|created|inventor|invented|invention georgian":
- 568
Google search for "parnavaz|farnavaz creation|creator|created|inventor|invented|invention georgian":
- 93
So that's roughly 85.93% mentions to Mesrop vs. 14.07% to Farnavaz.
Please clarify the article and debunk any myths but cutting chunks out isn't the Wikipedia way. Hippietrail 06:58, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I moved this page back. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization). --mav 03:00, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- Dear mav, I am Georgian historian. The Georgian (Kartvelian) language is a Iberian-Caucasian language (in Georgia is a well-known scientific school in the field of "IBERIAN-CAUCASIAN LINGUISTICS"). Georgian is spoken about 3 million abroad (Turkey, Russia, Iran, etc.). I think that for this article will be beter a title "Georgian alphabet" (or "Georgian language and alphabet"). Thank you in advance. --Dr. Levan Z. Urushadze 31 Jan 2004
- I wouldn't object to the title Georgian language and alphabet but why does "and alphabet" need to be in the title? --mav 03:35, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- It doesn't. We could certainly have separate Georgian language and Georgian alphabet articles though. Morwen 11:20, Jan 31, 2004 (UTC)
The speaker population estimates are confusing especially when compared to the ones given in South Caucasian languages. Would someone please give the separate estimates for
- How many people use Georgian (either as a native language or as an oficial or "everyday business" language) in each country;
- How many people are native speakers of each of the four languages (Georgian, Svan, Laz, Megrelian) in each country.
My understanding from the data given is that the whole population of Georgia uses Georgian (because it is the official language and the only written one) but only about 70% (about 4 million) are native speakers. But that means that about 1.5 million people in Georgia are not native speakers of Georgian. Are they all speakers of the three dialects, or are there other languages (not South Caucasian) spoken in Georgia?
Jorge Stolfi 04:25, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- 71% (more than 4 million) of the population of Georgia uses Georgian and are native speakers (ethnographic groups of Georgian people: Imeretians, Megrels, Guruls, Svans, Lazs (Chans), Ajarians, Rachvels, Lechkhumians, Kakhetians, Kartlis, Mokhevians, Khevsurs, Tushs).
| Contents |
Gender
I know that Georgian doesn't use masculine and feminine genders. However, according to grammatical gender there are many other types of "noun classes" that are also "genders" in linguistics. I don't know if Georgian has any of these other distinctions, so I was hesitant to simply say that "Georgian nouns have no gender." If anyone can clarify or expand, that'd be appreciated. Isomorphic 18:22, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- Good question. AFAIK, Georgian has nothing at all resembling grammatical gender or noun classes -- it's rather like Turkish or Hungarian in that regard. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 13:40, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Writing direction
Is this alphabet written left-to-right or right-to-left?
- Left to right. I'll look at the page and see if that has to be made clearer. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 16:11, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
What's the pronunciation of these consonant clusters? Surely there must be some Schwas involved?
- Not to my knowledge, but I have only a passing acquaintance with the language. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 21:25, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Contradiction?
Georgian is believed to have separated from Megrelian and Laz in the third millennium BC. Based on the degree of change, linguists (e.g. 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 separated from Georgian roughly a thousand years later.
"Believed" by whom?
- The linguists whose names are cited, I'd guess. Anyway, where do you see a "contradiction" here? --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 14:54, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- Ouch. On rereading, I see the contradiction. This really needs cleanup. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 13:16, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Phantom vowel
"In English, the closest sound to this is in the word rhythm, which can be heard in the pronunciation of the letters -th- and -m, in the pronunciation of e in the word butter, and in the pronuncation of train between the letters t and r."
Um, in my dialect, there is no vowel between these consonants. I pronounce them [rIDm=], [bV4r\=], and [t_SrEjn]. What's this "phantom" vowel supposed to be, exactly? -- Dysfunktion 00:38, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- I agree with you about "train", but in my dialect, and in standard American pronunciation in general, "rhythm" and "butter" do indeed have vowels. That's why they're two syllables -- "rhyth-?m" and "but-ter"; no syllable is possible without a vowel. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 05:23, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- Well, for me anyway, m and r are the vowels --Dysfunktion 19:22, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- I think most phoneticians reckon that there's a very short schwa before English "syllabic" consonants. If the consonant is Template:IPA, it sort of fuses with the schwa in a phenomenon called rhotacization. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 19:51, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Mother and father
I don't know Georgian, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that the Georgian words for mother and father are "reversed" from the pattern observed in most Indo-European and many non-Indo-European languages. As I remember, father is mama and mother is dada or tata or papa (I can't remember which). Anyway, could someone who knows Georgian please add the correct information to the article Mama and papa? Thanks! --Angr/comhrá 06:51, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- Done. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 19:48, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
English zelkova = Russian дзельква = Georgian ძელქვა ?
I've been researching the English word zelkova which is said to derive from a Caucasian language. Dictionaries are very hard to find so could anybody here verfiy that I've tracked down the right word please? — Hippietrail 13:46, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
Yes. you have tracked down the right word. But, I am not sure whether it is Russian or Georgian origin. I also looked it up in merriam-webster online dictionary (is that where you looked it up?) and it also gives the both Russian and Georgian origin, but does not tell which.
- The OED gives the following brief etymology:
- [mod.L. (E. Spach 1841, in Ann. des Sci. Nat.: Bot. 2nd Ser. XV. 352), f. zelkoua, tselkwa, cited by Spach as local names for Z. carpinifolia in the Caucasus: cf. mod.Russ. dzel´kova grabolistnaya.]
- "f." means "from". It doesn't give the language, but it looks like the English and Russian both derive from the Caucasian source. --kwamikagami 04:09, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC) [that's weird, I'm logged in but can't sign my name.]
Inconsistent romanization
We seem to have at least two inconsistent romanization schemes in this article; I'd like to settle on one. In the table that lists the vowels and consonants, we use IPA, which I personally prefer, whereas in some of the following discussions we use symbols like ç which are not IPA and which we never define.
ACW 19:35, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
- ç is, in fact, an IPA symbol (voiceless palatal fricative as in German ich), but I don't know if that's how it's being used here. --Angr/comhrá 23:29, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
- That's almost true. The voiceless palatal fricative is written in IPA with a "curly-tailed c", not a c with cedille. I wish I knew the Unicode for the former, so I could insert it here. Anyway, I've certainly seen the latter used for the former, and that's the sound I thought of when I saw the romanization. But alas, that segment is not used in Georgian. The writer probably meant Template:IPA. I wish somebody with better IPA-typing skills than I have would go through and make this consistent. ACW 02:22, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
Incorrect Use of IPA
/x/ & /ɣ/ are VELAR, not uvular. I would edit the article, but I don't know if Georgian has uvular or velar fricatives- so I'm not sure which way to edit it. BryanAJParry
