Contents
Resources
Please click here to find resources for use during the school summer school, including dictionaries and grammars.
The Georgian Alphabet
The Old Georgian alphabet has 38 letters (as opposed to Modern Georgian with 33 letters). There is no distinction between uppercase and lowercase letters in single words, and apart from ligatures (which sometimes appear also in edited texts) letters are free-standing and not interconnected.
In general, we speak of three Georgian alphabets (or in fact more properly, three scripts): mrglovani (also called asomtavruli, the earliest script), nuskhuri (the script of most medieval manuscripts), and mkhedruli (developed around 11.-13. cent., the basis of modern Georgian, and used in all modern editions). The alphabet introduced below is (in) mkhedruli.
Learning the letters
To learn the letters, you may start with the following video:
Drills
In this drill you will match the first 8 letters of the Old Georgian alphabet with their equivalent sounds in Latin characters:
Match the Latin letters with their Old Georgian equivalent (Georgian alphabetical order):
| a | ა |
| b | ბ |
| g | გ |
| d | დ |
| e | ე |
| v | ვ |
| z | ზ |
| ē | ჱ |
For further drills, go to the Memrise site, inscribe yourself as a user, and use their flip cards (with a free choice of memo-aids). The Memrise cards show only the Modern Georgian letters: https://app.memrise.com/
Or go to the drills at the bottom of this page.
Handwriting
Below is a video showing how to write the letters of Modern Georgian by hand (without the 5 specifically Old Georgian letters). The producer of the video is addressing a German audience; this is the reason for the repeated ‘wie’ (“like”) heard in the video, before the good examples of Georgian words and giving you clear indication of the pronunciation:
Below is a printable overview of how to write the alphabet by hand (again without the 5 specifically Old Georgian letters):
Typing Georgian letters on the computer
In order to type Georgian on the computer (most easily), choose ‘Georgian-QWERTY’ on Mac. On a Windows machine, you can type in Georgian by navigating to “Language Settings” and selecting Georgian from the “Add a language” menu. You can easily switch between input languages by using the Windows Key + Space bar shortcut.
More drills
Match the Latin letters with their Old Georgian equivalent (Georgian alphabetical order):
| t | თ |
| i | ი |
| k’ | კ |
| l | ლ |
| m | მ |
| n | ნ |
| y (or j) | ჲ |
Match the Latin letters with their Old Georgian equivalent (Georgian alphabetical order):
| o | ო |
| p’ | პ |
| ž | ჟ |
| r | რ |
| s | ს |
| t’ | ტ |
| vi | ჳ |
Match the Latin letters with their Old Georgian equivalent (Georgian alphabetical order):
| u | უ |
| p | ფ |
| k | ქ |
| ġ | ღ |
| q’ | ყ |
| sh | შ |
Match the Latin letters with their Old Georgian equivalent (Georgian alphabetical order):
| ch | ჩ |
| ts | ც |
| dz | ძ |
| ts’ | წ |
| ch’ | ჭ |
Match the Latin letters with their Old Georgian equivalent (Georgian alphabetical order):
| kh | ხ |
| q | ჴ |
| ǯ | ჯ |
| h | ჰ |
| ho | ჵ |
Practice Finding Word
Click here for exercises to practice identifying words in Georgian.
The declension
Click here for a page with exercises on the declension (of Georgian nouns, pronouns and adjectives).