Which language is one of the oldest in the world, and has its own alphabet?
We’ve all heard of languages like Latin or Greek, that provide the basis for well-known language families. And some of us have heard that languages like Icelandic and Tamil have been in use for centuries with little alteration. But do you know about a language that uses its own alphabet that is different from any other in the world, and is just as old as Celtic or Aramaic?
Welcome to Not Trivial! A podcast that takes a deeper dive into the stories behind the trivia questions you may or may not have heard at the pub. My name is Liz, and I’ve been a trivia nerd since I was young. My parents and I would play Trivial Pursuit very often. I’ve hosted and played pub trivia, and I’m a collector of random history, language, and world culture facts. One of my greatest passions is sharing what I’ve collected with others. I’m hopeful this podcast makes the trivia questions feel less trivial, and more important to understanding how the past creates the present, and subsequently the future. Let’s get started…
Today, finally, we get to nerd out on some linguistic facts. In the intro I mentioned a few languages you might be familiar with: Latin, Greek, Icelandic, Tamil, Celtic, and Aramaic. The big daddy language for most of the West is Latin. It’s the language associated with medieval Europe, ancient Rome, the Catholic Church, and is the base for all Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian). Non-Romance language speakers use Latin. As well as Greek. Because they’re part of the medical field, the sciences. But Latin is not that old, not by a long shot. It’s only 2,700 years old roughly. The form of Latin some of us still use today is ‘classical Latin’ and only developed around 75 BC. Greek is a bit older, being roughly 3400 years old.
There are much older languages. Like Tamil! This is the oldest living language, still spoken by millions today. It’s been with us roughly 5,000 years - twice as long as Latin. We think Homer writing the Odyssey is so impressive. Which it is - he wrote it around 750-650 BC. But Tamil? The earliest text in Tamil is called the Tolkappiyam and could have been written as far back as 3,000 years ago. That would beat Homer by almost three centuries. The Celtic language is also much older than Latin, developing around 1200 BC, with early inscriptions dating to the 6th century BC. The Celts dominated Europe for hundreds of years before the Roman Empire ever existed.
And yet we’re not talking about any of these languages today. Why? Because speakers of Tamil are spread across multiple countries: Sri Lanka, India, Singapore, and Malaysia. OK then, Iceland is the only country to use the Icelandic language. Nobody else in the world’s countries speaks this also very old language, but Icelandic is written using the same writing system as many other languages. It uses the Latin script. A Danish or Swiss or Mexican speaker could learn Icelandic and easily recognize that a round circle is the letter o. Granted, Icelandic also modifies the Latin script with runic Old Norse characteristics, but generally speaking, it’s not the same as an English speaker learning Mandarin Chinese. You’re not just learning how to pronounce words and understand their meaning, you’re also learning how to read a new writing system.
First linguistic fact today? There are 293 writing systems worldwide. The Latin script that many languages use is called an alphabet. But Mandarin Chinese doesn’t have an alphabet, it uses a logographic. That’s why we call them characters and not letters. There’s also a syllabary, which is a phonetic writing system that uses symbols to represent syllables. Japanese uses a syllabary as an example. An abjad is the type of writing system that Arabic uses. Only consonants are represented in writing, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred. Abugidas are a cross between a syllabary and an abjad, there are symbols for both consonants and vowels. Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, and Thai are languages that use an abugida. So does Tamil!
There are hundreds more, but you get the idea. So today we’re talking about a language that is as old as Latin, is still spoken today, and uses its own writing system. We’re talking about the country of Georgia and the Georgian language. Let’s first talk about where Georgia is! This is vital to understanding why the language is unique. Georgia sits between the Black and Caspian Seas, in the region known as the Caucasus. But the entire length of Georgia’s northern border is mountains. Very tall mountains. This is the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range, and some of its peaks are as many as 16-17,000 feet high. That’s about as tall as many of the peaks in the Andes in South America. The big difference here is that the mountain range runs the entire length between the Black and Caspian Seas. This makes pre-modern travel (no cars, planes or trains) very difficult. Does Georgia get a break and have no mountains elsewhere? Nope. The Likhi Range divides the country into its eastern and western halves. And they also serve as a connection between the Greater Caucasus range to the north and the Lesser Caucasus range to the south of Georgia.
Yes, Georgia is effectively contained by mountains. And has two deep and large inland seas to its east and west. Signs of agriculture in the region date back to at least the 6th century BC, especially in Western Georgia along the Black Sea. This area of Georgia has archaelogical findings that shows the world’s first use of fiber for clothing more than 34,000 years ago, the first cases of viticulture (or wine growing) dating back almost 10,000 years, and the first signs of gold mining more than 5,000 years ago. It is in western Georgia that the Golden Fleece of Greek mythology was sought after by the Argonauts. To say this country has a deep and rich cultural history is a vast understatement.
And I’m mentioning the mountain ranges because it played a significant role in influencing its language by creating natural barriers that fostered regional variations and linguistic diversity. This is why the Georgian language is such a deep resource for linguists. The natural barriers provided a degree of protection against linguistic assimilation or replacement by other languages. With every peak and valley of the mountains there, a regional dialect cropped up.
Georgian is a Kartvelian language. And there are only a couple of other Kartvelian languages, which are not widely spoken outside of the Caucasus region. Which means that Georgian is not related to any other language in the world. The way Georgian sounds is distinct. It has a rich consonant system, including aspirated, voiced, and ejective stops, as well as fricatives and affricatives. An aspirated stop is either a ph or th or kh sound. A voice stop is a b or d or g sound. An ejective stop is a p or t or k or q sound. A fricative is either the voiceless s or h sound, but can also be the voiced v or z sound. Georgian also has five vowels, which are used in a variety of ways.
Consonants are the breadwinners of this language. Consonant clusters and harmonic clusters are complex and dominant in the Georgian language. As many as six consonants can be in a row inside the same word. The Georgian word ‘gvprtskvni’ starts with 8 consonants and effectively creates its own sentence: you peel us. While you may not use that word often in Georgian, you would hopefully use the word ‘mts’vrtneli’ more often. It means a trainer or coach. My deepest apologies to any native Georgian speakers for my butchering of your beautiful language. The harmonic clusters are absolutely brilliant in my opinion. If you’re going to cluster consonants, why not use consonants that are of a similar type? Yes, let’s put multiple voiced sounds together or multiple aspirated sounds together, so that you pronounce the word with only a single release of sound. The word for water is ‘ts’q’ali’ includes an ejective affricative, an ejective stop, and ends on the lateral sound of the l plus the close vowel sound of the i.
Georgian also has a rich word-derivation system. It uses a root word and adds either prefixes or suffixes to create a new noun or adjective. For example the root word of -kart- can help create words like Kartveli “a Georgian person”, Kartuli “the Georgian language”, and Sakartvelo “the country of Georgia”. This is called an agglutinative language. Other languages like Turkish, Korean, Finnish, Hungarian, and Swahili are also agglutinative. One trademark of an agglutinative language is when seemingly one word can provide an entire sentence’s worth of meaning. The word ‘ageshenebinat’ is written as one word, but it translates to ‘you all should have built it’. Each part of the word contributes to the meaning of the verb. Yes, this is one verb, and yet it exhibits polypersonalism; meaning it includes representations of both the subject and the object that the verb revolves around.
Georgian has also seven cases for nouns. This is one of my favorite parts of grammar, so let’s get into it. We English speakers can’t fathom what this means, and the only example we’re ever given is when we’re corrected to say ‘whom’ and not ‘who’. To whom do you give this gift? is grammatically correct as it relates to noun cases. You, the subject, are giving a gift, an object, to someone else. In order to be grammatically correct, you have to change the noun to reflect the kind of verb you’re using. This would be the dative case, meaning there is a recipient involved. Same Latin root word as donor. And in English, we say ‘whom’ after the prepositions ‘to’ or ‘by’ or ‘with’. When referring to an object that is being given or handed over or set down.
The other six noun cases are nominative, ergative, genitive, instrumental, adverbial, and vocative. Nominative generally means there is no change to the noun, as it generally marks the subject of a verb: the man eats. Ergative is referring to the subject of a transitive verb and, in Georgian, also in the past tense: the man ate the apple. This means the noun ‘man’ will change from its nominative state, as will the noun for ‘apple’. The genitive case indicates possession or belonging. For example: Sakartvelos respublika (the Republic of Georgia). The noun ‘Georgia’ has changed because another noun influences it to indicate possession. Other examples might be ‘the man’s house’ or ‘the podcast’s content’. A good example of the instrumental case in georgian is the sentence ‘he is cutting the paper with scissors’. The scissors are a tool, an instrument, that directly influences the verb, therefore the object noun of ‘paper’ must change accordingly. English does have this case, but our words in modern English don’t change. We say ‘he is cutting with a knife’ and that would not indicate the dative case, it would indicate the instrumental. But the word ‘knife’ doesn’t change its spelling or pronunciation. Georgian does. The adverbial case is when a noun is used to describe how something is done or in what capacity. For example, ‘I am using this paper as a letter’ - as opposed ‘as a plane’ or ‘as a snowball’. And the vocative case is used when you address someone directly, calling them by name effectively. For example, when you speak to your parents by calling them ‘mother’ or ‘father’. As opposed to using those words differently in a sentence like ‘my mother works in town’.
OK, deep breath. How you holding up so far? It’s a lot of cool linguistic stuff. And we haven’t even scratched the surface of the Georgian language. Let’s take a small break from the nerd details and talk about why linguists love Georgian as a language. Well, it has a distinct structure. The cases I just reviewed. They provide insight into how languages encode grammatical relationships and how case systems evolve. More so because Georgian has been without external influence from other languages. Can’t say the same with English - those pesky Normans brought over their proto-French in 1066 and we’ve been expanding our vocabulary and grammar ever since. Georgian is also highly productive in word formation because it is agglutinative. Georgian hasn’t needed to borrow words from other languages. Maybe some Turkish or Persian or Greek was borrowed, but it’s only in very recent modern times that Georgian has borrowed words like ‘computer’ or ‘chocolate’. Last but not least, its geographical isolation and long cultural history means that this is a language that can help us understand how language evolves, specifically dialects. There are at least 18 dialects of Georgian. The UK has about 40, but again, the English language didn’t evolve in isolation. So how did these 18 dialects in Georgian evolve in relative isolation?
When you put it that way, it’s absolutely fascinating. It’s like a linguist’s version of a control group. And because Georgian developed in isolation, it means its writing system did the same. And we can’t talk about the writing system without talking about the country’s history a little bit. Specifically, how Christianity came to Georgia.
Way back in the 4th century BC, Alexander the Great conquered the eastern part of Georgia, with the west already under Roman rule. And it remained a Roman client state for a few more centuries. But in 337 AD, King Mirian III adopted Christianity as the state religion and this began the Christianization of the Caucasus region. This is the same year as the death of the Roman Emperor Constantine, who was the first to convert to Christianity. Prior to this conversion, the religion of the region was mainly Zoroastrianism and a native polytheistic religion. Over the next couple centuries, the Georgian script was developed. By 430 AD, the Georgian script was being used to translate the Bible and other Christian literature of the time. The Bir el Qutt inscription gives us this date and are four Old Georgian Byzantine mosaic inscriptions in the Asomtavruli script. Two of the four date to 430 AD and the other two date to 532 AD. Inscription 1 reads as ‘Jesus Christ, have mercy on Bakur and Griormizd and their descendants’. Inscription 2 reads as ‘Saint Theodore, have mercy on Maruan and Burzen, Amen’. Inscription 3 reads as ‘With the help of Jesus Christ and Saint Theodore, God have mercy on Abba Antony and Iosia the layer of this mosaic and the father and mother of Iosia, Amen’. Inscription 4 cannot be read due to significant damage.
Clearly, the language already existed, but the writing system helped the speakers to illustrate and demonstrate their faith. The oldest Georgian script of Asomtavruli means ‘capital letters’. It is signified by its mainly round letter shapes. All letters are of equal height and the letter sounds go as follows: ani, bani, gani, doni, eni, vini, zeni, and so on. This sounds very Greek-like. Alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta. But Greek has 24 letters and this version of Georgian has 38 letters. By the 9th century, a new script was being used, called Nuskhuri. This version of the script makes the letters less round, the same 38 letters have a more angular shape and are slanted to the right. This is an attempt to make it easier to write the language on paper or vellum. The third iteration of Georgian script is called Mkhedruli and is still in use today. It has only 33 letters, but those 5 that were removed were only officially removed in 1879 because they had become redundant.
Mkhedruli is initially appearing in Georgian manuscripts in the 10th century. The letter shapes here are back to being a little more round and the way you could write was more free - meaning you don’t have to write them in a North South East West fashion like you would have had to do with Nuskhuri and even Asomtavruli. Writing Georgian is much more flexible than that, very much using the wrist to make the letters use up the space well. There are diagonal angles in some letters, and others have curves that are slanted. It’s a very pretty visual. Some of the manuscripts of Georgia’s historical figures show that handwriting varied wildly. Calligraphy from Prince Garsevan Chavchavadze has multiple long curlicues on much smaller core of the letter. But King Archil of Imereti’s calligraphy is very tall and lean, with letters very close and their respective flourishes crossing over each other.
Punctuation in Georgian today is very much like any language that uses the Latin script. Periods and commas and the like. But early on, Georgian used a combination of dots as word or paragraph dividers. In the 9th century, dashes or clustered dots were introduced to increase the breaks in a text. One dot was a simple word break, but two dots marked special words and three dots indicated a major break, but six dots marked the end of a sentence. Apostrophes and commas wove their way in by the 11th century. The semicolon replaced the comma at ends of sentences to mark a question - and that’s because the semicolon is the Greek question mark.
While Georgian letters may look familiar to you, they were constructed independently from other languages. For example, the 6th letter of the Georgian alphabet ‘vini’ looks like the number 3. This letter isn’t in the Greek alphabet, but lower case Omega looks like a vini that’s lying down. The upper case Greek letter of ‘gamma’ looks like a mirror image of the Asomtavruli letter for ‘eni’. Two totally different sounds. The Georgian alphabet is only used by the Georgian language. No other language in the world looks like Georgian.
So, are you a fan of Georgian yet? That’s not necessarily my intent today, but I do wish to point out that there is more to the world’s languages than we realize. And fun facts about languages always point that out to me like nothing else. For example, Georgian has no grammatical gender; even pronouns are ungendered. Georgian also uses no articles, so it’s not a difference between ‘guest’ or ‘a guest’ or ‘the guest’, it’s said the exact same way. Georgian is also left-branching, so adjectives precede nouns and objects precede verbs. English has examples of both left- and right-branching. In a literary sense for example, “In the quiet, dimly lit library, with the scent of old leather filling the air, a lone student sat engrossed in a book” - sounds very eloquent. But the average English writer would say “He sat alone reading his book in the quiet library, that smelled of old leather”. In normal everyday life, an English speaker wouldn’t say “In the garden, under the old oak tree, with a bright red ball, the child played”. But a Georgian speaker would have to say it this way. Lucky for them, remember, their language is agglutinative, so that long sentence in English is perhaps seven or eight words in Georgian.
Let’s try to listen to a native Georgian speaker. See if you can pick out what I’ve been talk about up until now…
This was a middle aged man reading the first Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It seems as if all the words run together - because they do. But also, you really don’t hear many vowel sounds. It’s not the same as a language like Italian or even Japanese that has so many uses for vowels. Let’s listen in again…
Georgian can be difficult to listen to, if you’re trying to pick out words or phrases. So, it’s not you! It’s the Georgian language!
And that’s the deep dive into the world’s most historically isolated language family. The answer to the trivia question: Which language is one of the oldest in the world, and has its own alphabet? Stay tuned for a look at Georgian culture, the words and phrases behind that distinct culture, and some of the places you can visit.
Georgian culture has evolved over thousands of years. In the 11th century, Georgian culture enjoyed a renaissance and golden age of classical literature, art, philosophy, science, and architecture. Georgia is known for its folklore, traditional music and dance, and its notable artists, like George Balanchine, Lado Gudiashvili, and Galaktion Tabidze.
If you visit the country of Georgia, you will likely dine on regional delicacies. But you’ll also be witness to the supra, which is a Georgian-style of feast that requires a tamada, or toastmaster. When dining at a supra, if the tamada raises their glass and makes a toast, you cannot abstain. Popular dishes in Georgia include khachapuri, which is cheese-filled bread, satsivi, which is chicken meat in a walnut sauce called bazhe, and ghomi, which is a porridge made of cornmeal. There are many, many regions of Georgia, with their own famous dishes. All of Georgian cuisine is varied, including cheese and bread, soups or stews with meat and spice, fish as well, vegetarian dishes, and many sauces that can be a paste of mixed spices or based in a fruit like tomato or plum.
Naturally, you would be slaking your thirst at a supra with Georgian wine. There are 38 grape varieties that are officially grown for commercial viticulture in Georgia. Perhaps a Saperavi, which is a red wine that’s been produced since 1886. Or maybe you will sip on an amber wine, with its notes of apricot, honey, and walnut. You’ll be spoiled for choice, and don’t worry about choosing something you’ll like, because Georgia makes wine by the millions. In 2019, Georgia exported 94 million bottles of wine to 53 different countries around the world. That may not be anything close to the big dogs of wine production and exportation like France, California, or Australia, but for a country of 3.5 million people, that’s a lot of wine!
You may want to visit Tsinandali village, which is home to the estate of Alexander Chachavadze. Or perhaps you want to tour around Tbilisi, the country’s capital. Home to Mtskheta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which includes 11th century Svetitskhoveli Cathedral and 6th century Jvari Monastery. Who can resist the country’s most iconic site: Tsminda Sameba (Holy Trinity Church), perched on a hill above Kazbegi and built in the 14th century. From the front, this church appears to have three entrance gates increasing in size before reaching the plateau of the roof. And the internal central tower rises like a golden spinning top, letting in so much light into the cavernous space.
If you visit Georgia, you’ll need to learn words like Gamarjoba (hello) and Madloba (thank you), as well Tu Sheidzleba (please). If the food is good, say ‘Gemrielia’ (delicious). Maybe you’ll learn to count to ten: Erti, Ori, Sami, Otkhi, Khuti, Eqvsi, Svidi, Rva, Tskhra, Ati. And after saying Gamarjoba, you’ll want to ask Rogor khar? But be warned! Go further into learning Georgian phrases, even seemingly simple ones and you’re in for a roller coaster.
‘Sasiamovnoa sheni gatsnoba’ is a mouthful, but it might be worth it so you can say ‘nice to meet you’. And while wine is easy enough to order (‘ghvino’), milk may not be: rdze. The desserts in Georgia are delicious, but if you want to describe something as sweet, you have to learn: t’k’bili. And if you accidentally stub your toe on the corner of the dining table, someone will probably ask you if it’s painful, or: mt’k’ivneuli.
Just know that the country of Georgia is intensely proud of having a unique language. Georgians identify with their regional dishes, their polyphonic music, their mesmerizing national dances, and how tricky it can be for literally anyone else to read their road signs or carry a casual conversation. Don’t worry though - there’s plenty of Latin script, so you’ll know where you’re headed!
I hope you enjoyed this little tale of the sweet country of Georgia! Another episode of Not Trivial is coming soon, so please subscribe - available wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you!