South Caucasian languages
The
South Caucasian or
Kartvelian languages are spoken primarily in
Georgia, with smaller groups of speakers in
Turkey,
Iran, and
Russia.
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Georgian languages**
Georgian (
kartuli in Georgian,
gruzinski in Russian), with 4.1 million native speakers. Of these, there are 3.9 million in
Georgia, and about 50,000 each in
Turkey and
Iran.
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Gruzinic (also called
Judæo-Georgian;
kivruli in Georgian and Gruzinic,
gruzinit in Russian), with about 80,000 speakers, of whom 60,000 are in
Israel, and 20,000 in Georgia. May be considered a dialect of Georgian.
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Zan languages**
Megrelian or
Mingrelian (
margaluri in Megrelian,
megruli in Georgian), with some 500 000 native speakers as of 1989, mainly in the
Samegrelo region of Western Georgia and (at the time) in the
Gali district of eastern
Abkhazia. Many Mingrelian refugees from Abkhazia now live in
Tbilisi.
**
Laz (
lazuri in Laz and Georgian, also
chanuri in Georgian), with 33,000 native speakers as of 1980, mostly in the
Black Sea littoral area of Northeast
Turkey, where they constitute a third of the ethnic Georgian population, and with some 2000 in the
Ajaria district of Georgia.
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Svan language (
lushnu in Svan,
svanuri in Georgian), with approximately 15,000 native speakers in the north-western mountainous region of Georgia.
With the exception of Georgian and Gruzinic, these languages are not mutually intelligible. However, they are clearly related, and Laz and Megrelian are officially considered a single language, called "Zan". The connection between all these languages was first reported in linguistic literature by
J. Güldenstädt in the 18th century, and later proven by
G. Rosen,
M. Brosset,
F. Bopp and others during the 1840's. They are believed to have split off from a single
proto-Kartvelian language, possibly spoken in the region of present-day Georgia and Northern Turkey in the 3rd-2nd millenniums BC.
Based on
the degree of change, some linguists (including
A. Chikobava,
G. Klimov,
T. Gamkrelidze, and
G. Machavariani) conjecture that the earliest split, which separated Svan from the other languages, occurred in the
second millennium BC or earlier; while Megrelian and Laz were separated from Georgian roughly a thousand years later, and split from each other roughly 500 years ago.
Gruzinic is sometimes regarded as a variant of Georgian, modified by the inclusion of large numbers of
Hebrew and
Aramaic loanwords. Its divergence from Georgian is comparatively recent.
Higher-level connections
No relationship with other languages, not even with the
North Caucasian families, has been demonstrated so far. Some linguists have proposed that the Kartvelian family is part of a much larger
Nostratic language family, but both the concept of a Nostratic family and Georgian's relation thereto are in doubt.
Certain grammatical similarities with
Basque, especially in the
case system, have often been pointed out. However, most linguists dismiss those resemblances as very limited and superficial, more likely to be random coincidences than inherited traits from a common ancestral language.
Any similarities to other linguistic phyla may well be due to areal influences. Heavy borrowing in either direction (i.e. North Caucasian to South Caucasian and vice versa) has been observed, thus it is quite probable that certain grammatical features have been influenced as well. If the
Dene-Caucasian hypothesis, which attempts to link
Basque,
Burushaski,
North Caucasian and other phyla, is right, then the above mentioned similarities to Basque may also be due these influences, however indirect.
It is well known today that the Proto-Kartvelian vocabulary was also influenced by
Indo-European languages to some extent, whence probably the earlier attempts to link these families to form a higher genealogical unit.
Georgian is the official language of the republic of
Georgia (spoken by 90% of the population of this country), 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.
Mingrelian has been written (with the Georgian alphabet) since 1864, especially in the period from 1930 to 1938, when the Megrelians enjoyed some cultural autonomy, and after 1989.
The Laz language was written chiefly between 1927 and 1937, and now again in Turkey, with Latin alphabets. Laz however is disappearing as its speakers are integrating into mainstream Turkish society.
Guruzinic was the language of the
Gruzim, the ancient
Jewish community of Georgia. It is often written using the
Hebrew alphabet.
*
Lazuri Nena - The Language of the Laz by Silvia Kutscher.
*
The Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics, Georgian Academy of Sciences
