The Georgian alphabet
Georgian is written with an alphabet of its own that looks like no other: not Latin, not Greek, not Cyrillic, not Armenian. It is one of the fourteen living writing systems in the world, and Unesco listed it as intangible cultural heritage.
The one in use today is called Mkhedruli and has 33 letters, all rounded and all with a single shape: there is no uppercase and lowercase. That absence is an advantage for a learner, because there is no second version of anything to memorise, and its sheer distance from the Latin alphabet is paradoxically another: there are no false friends to trip you up, because nothing looks like anything you know.
The match between letter and sound is nearly perfect: it reads exactly as it is written. The difficulty lies in sounds English does not have, such as the ejective consonants, but you do not need those in order to recognise the letters.
The 33 letters of Mkhedruli
| Mkhedruli | Name | Sounds like | Looks like |
|---|---|---|---|
| ა | An | A | O |
| ბ | Ban | B | |
| გ | Gan | G | |
| დ | Don | D | O |
| ე | En | E | J |
| ვ | Vin | V | |
| ზ | Zen | Z | B |
| თ | Tan | T | O |
| ი | In | I | O |
| კ | K'an | K' | J |
| ლ | Las | L | M |
| მ | Man | M | D |
| ნ | Nar | N | B |
| ო | On | O | |
| პ | P'ar | P' | |
| ჟ | Zhan | ZH | J |
| რ | Rae | R | M |
| ს | San | S | |
| ტ | T'ar | T' | B |
| უ | Un | U | |
| ფ | Par | P | Q |
| ქ | Kan | K | D |
| ღ | Ghan | GH | Y |
| ყ | Q'ar | Q' | Y |
| შ | Shin | SH | D |
| ჩ | Chin | CH | B |
| ც | Tsan | TS | G |
| ძ | Dzil | DZ | D |
| წ | Ts'il | TS' | W |
| ჭ | Ch'ar | CH' | B |
| ხ | Khan | KH | B |
| ჯ | Jan | J | X |
| ჰ | Hae | H | B |
Words to practise
- დედა deda
- მამა mama
- იმედი imedi
- სამი sami
- ნინო nino
- ლომი lomi
- თითი titi
- სული suli
- მთვარე mtvare
- ქალი kali
- ჰაერი haeri
- ზამთარი zamtari
How you learn it in Phabetia
Every new letter is introduced first with its name and its Latin equivalent, and you have to recognise it before you start practising it. Then come the exercises: letter to sound, sound to letter, quick memory, telling it apart from the Latin letter it resembles, spotting the intruder, completing a word and reading one.
Characters arrive two or three at a time and are never dropped: each level carries the previous ones along. What you get wrong comes back sooner and more often; what you have mastered shows up rarely, and anything you have not seen for days climbs back up on its own.
There are no lives and no punishment: getting one wrong interrupts nothing. To move on you only need 70 % right.
Frequently asked questions
How many letters does the Georgian alphabet have?
Thirty-three in Mkhedruli, which is the script used for everything today. All of them are written one way only.
What about Mtavruli, those Georgian letters that look like capitals?
It is a typographic variant used in headlines and signage, rather like writing in small caps. It is not the other half of a pair the way our capitals are, so it is not taught here as a separate form.
Is it hard to learn?
Less than it looks. Since it resembles nothing, no letter deceives you; and since there are not two shapes per letter, there is half the material of Greek or Cyrillic.