Learning Georgian 1

So I think I might try to pick up a bit of Georgian. It's my namesake after all, and has a very interesting verbal system. I've decided to start with three sentences and will give some info (that Claude told me, sorry!)

Script

The script is not terribly confusing and just needs a bit of work and time to get used to, but I'm finding I write several letters about the same. Like in ვიცი (vitsi) I am writing v and ts very similarly. It'll get there! It's easier than Hiragana / Katakana and I managed those just fine. Also some like ნ (n) and ს (s) are surprisingly hard to write in a way that looks good...

My studying the script is a bit incomplete, and I'm going to try pick up the gaps a bit by actually just reading it a bit or trying to use it. It'll get there over time. Hiragana took me a while to get comfortable with even if I had learnt it initially in a few days.

Prettiness

I'm not sure if I like the language aesthetically. It's very consonanty. Guess I'll get used to it? I do appreciate the ergativity and interesting grammar though.

1. I want to study the Georgian language.

I translated it as

• მინდა ვისწავლო ქართული ენა. (Minda vistsavlo kartuli ena).

Minda is a form of unda (უნდა) meaning want. It's a sort of particle and takes the future subjunctive of the verb, though I'm not confident how to form that yet.

As far as I am aware, vistsavlo breaks down like: v- (1ps), -i- which is a vowel but unsure why this one, -stsavl- is the root, and -o marks the subjunctive, or something like that. Kartuli is Georgian, with the -i representing nominative, though often in other cases the -i drops off for attributive adjectives. Ena is language.

In reality, though, it should be მინდა ვისწავლო ქართულ ენას (~it~minda vistavlo kartul enas~) because ~it~ena should be in the dative. There are three main cases, nominative, ergative and dative, and in this present/future paradigm for class I verbs it takes a subject in the nominative and object in the dative (marked with -s).

2. I know the language is very difficult.

I took a bit of a funny approach here and thought using a genitive and noun structure would be better, like :-

• მე ქართულის ენის სირთულე ვიცი. (Me kartulis enis sirtule vitsi)

Me is the dative of I, so essentially means (to) me in English. A nice coincidence. Vitsi is Class IV I believe and requires a dative subject and nominative object in a series. (A series is a group of screeves - there are three series basically and they affect what cases are used amongst other things, I don't know the details yet). I guess in that way it's similar to structures like German das gefällt mir using a dative mir to mark the subject). Kartulis enis would be the genitive, which uses suspiciously close marking to the dative sadly. And sirtule is difficulty in the nominative.

However, turns out that they don't speak like that, and preferentially say

• ვიცი, რომ ქართული ენა ძნელია (vitsi, rom kartuli ena dzvelia)

Where rom means that to introduce subordinates. Kartuli ena is back in the nominative and dzvelia is a way of saying is difficult - ა (a) apparently is a copulative.

3. I will write blog posts in Georgian.

• ქართულით ენით ბლოგპოსტს ვწერს. (Kartulit enit blogp'ost's vts'ers).

It should be

• ქართულ ენაზე ბლოგპოსტებს დავწერ. (Kartul enaze blogp'ost'ebs davts'er)

So dreadfully wrong on this one. I used the instrumental -it case of kartuli ena but a. I shouldn't be marking it on the adjective; b. I shouldn't be using instrumental as either adverbial ქართულად (kartulad) or a postpositional ქართულ ენაზე (kartul enaze, where enaze is ena + -ze meaning 'on' - on the Georgian language, basically)

I forgot the plural marking -eb on blogp'ost'i. The -i of the nominative becomes a -s for the dative here, again object marking in class I series I, so I believe.

For the future it needs the preverb added which for ts'er (write) is da-. The v- marks the first person subject. There is a plural suffix -t but from what I gleam that is used only for marking alongside the subject (v-Verb-t to mark we verb) or the second person plural object but it's not used for the third person, hence why it's not used despite the object being plural: because the object is third person.

Closing words

God this language is confusing. But I do feel like it's become less confusing, even only looking at it for about an hour or so. The thing I don't have is a proper grasp of it in the weeds, so to speak. I don't actually know all the person markings and the cases that are marked and the specifics of different classes, and all the different screeves yet. But it'll get there. I think the difficult bit will be that I will have to learn alongside the verbs the random vowels (like the i in vistsavlo and and the preverbs that get used. That might be difficult. We'll see!

Piccies

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