Kartvelian languages

Georgian is the official language of Georgia (spoken by 90% of the population) and the main language for literary and business use for all Kartvelian speakers in Georgia. It is written with an original and distinctive alphabet, and the oldest surviving literary text dates from the 5th century AD. The old Georgian script seems to have been derived from the Greek script.[8]

Mingrelian has been written with the Georgian alphabet since 1864, especially in the period from 1930 to 1938, when the Mingrelians enjoyed some cultural autonomy, and after 1989.

The Laz language was written mainly between 1927 and 1937, and now again in Turkey using the Latin alphabet. Laz, however, is disappearing as its speakers are integrating into mainstream Turkish society.

The Kartvelian language family consists of four closely related languages:

• Svan (ლუშნუ ნინ, lušnu nin), with approximately 35,000–40,000 native speakers in Georgia, mainly in the northwestern mountainous region of Svaneti and the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia
• Georgian-Zan (also called Karto-Zan)
  • Georgian (ქართული ენა, kartuli ena) with approximately 4 million native speakers, mainly in Georgia. There are Georgian-speaking communities in Russia, Turkey, Iran, Israel, and EU countries, but the current number and distribution of them are unknown.
    • Judaeo-Georgian (ყივრული ენა, kivruli ena) with some 85,000 speakers, is the only Kartvelian Jewish dialect, its status being the subject of debate among scholars.[9]
  • Zan (also called Colchian)
    • Mingrelian (მარგალური ნინა, margaluri nina), with some 500,000 native speakers in 1989, mainly in the western regions of Georgia, namely Samegrelo and Abkhazia (at present in Gali district only). The number of Mingrelian speakers in Abkhazia was very strongly affected by the war with Georgia in the 1990s which resulted in the expulsion and flight of the ethnic Georgian population, the majority of which were Mingrelians. Nevertheless, Georgians in Abkhazia (mostly Mingrelians) make up 18% of the population, in Gali district 91.5%.[10] The Mingrelians displaced from Abkhazia are scattered elsewhere in the Georgian government territory, with dense clusters in Tbilisi and Zugdidi.
    • Laz (ლაზური ნენა, lazuri nena), with 22,000 native speakers in 1980, mostly in the Black Sea littoral area of northeast Turkey, and with some 2,000 in Adjara, Georgia.

• Proto-Kartvelian language

• Boeder, W. (1979). Ergative syntax and morphology in language change: the South Caucasian languages. In: Plank, F. (ed.), Ergativity: towards a theory of grammatical relations. Orlando: Academic Press, pp. 435-480.
• Boeder, W. (2002). Speech and thought representation in the Kartvelian (South Caucasian) languages. In: Güldemann, T., von Roncador, M. (eds.), Reported Discourse. A Meeting-Ground of Different Linguistic Domains. Typological Studies in Language, vol. 52. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, pp. 3–48.
• Boeder, W. (2005). "The South Caucasian languages", Lingua, vol. 115, iss. 1–2 (Jan.-Feb.), pp. 5–89
• Dalby, A. (2002). Language in Danger; The Loss of Linguistic Diversity and the Threat to Our Future. Columbia University Press.
• Deeters, Gerhard (1930). Das kharthwelische Verbum: vergleichende Darstellung des Verbalbaus der südkaukasischen Sprachen. Leipzig: Markert und Petters.
• Delshad, F. (2010). Georgica et Irano-Semitica (in German). Wiesbaden.
• Fähnrich, H. (2002). Kartwelische Wortschatzstudien. Jena: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität.
• Fähnrich, H. & Sardzhveladze, Z. (2000). Etymological Dictionary of the Kartvelian Languages (in Georgian). Tbilisi.
• Gamkrelidze, Th. (1966) "A Typology of Common Kartvelian", Language, vol. 42, no. 1 (Jan.–Mar.), pp. 69–83
• Gamkrelidze, Th. & Ivanov, V. (1995). Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language and a Proto-Culture. 2 vols. Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Harris, Alice C. (1985). Diachronic syntax: the Kartvelian case. Academic Press.
• Hewitt, B.G. (1995). Georgian: A Structural Reference Grammar. John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 978-90-272-3802-3.
• Kajaia, O. (2001). Megrelian-Georgian dictionary (in Georgian). 1. Tbilisi.
• Kartozia, G. (2005). The Laz language and its place in the system of Kartvelian languages (in Georgian). Tbilisi.
• Klimov, G. (1964). Etymological Dictionary of the Kartvelian Languages (in Russian). Moscow.
• Klimov, G. (1994). Einführung in die kaukasische Sprachwissenschaft. Hamburg: Buske.
• Klimov, G. (1998). Etymological Dictionary of the Kartvelian Languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Klimov, G. (1998). Languages of the World: Caucasian languages (in Russian). Moscow: Academia.
• Lang, D.M. (1966). The Georgians. New York: Praeger.
• Ruhlen, M. (1987). A Guide to the World's Languages, Vol. 1: Classification. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Tuite, K. (1998). Kartvelian Morphosyntax. Number agreement and morphosyntactic orientation in the South Caucasian languages. (Studies in Caucasian Linguistics, 12). Munich: LINCOM Europa.

• Lazuri Nena – The Language of the Laz by Silvia Kutscher.
• The Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics, Georgian Academy of Sciences
• Arthur Holmer, The Iberian-Caucasian Connection in a Typological Perspective
• The rise and fall and revival of the Ibero-Caucasian hypothesis by Kevin Tuite (Université de Montréal).