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Travel Stories >> Georgia >> Kartuli

- (KARTULI - THE GEORGIAN TONGUE)

Everyone (even the Georgians) said, “Georgian? Why learn Georgian, you’ll never need it again. Learn Russian, you can use that everywhere!” But I may never be in a place I really need Russian, and if I am then maybe I’ll learn Russian. Besides, for the next 3+ years I would really like to converse with the woman who sells me fruit or the guys who are fixing my plumbing, in their own language.

There is nothing quite so frustrating to someone who loves communicating to be immersed in a place where she can’t even read the signs (and this after time in Jordan and Bangladesh, both with their unique and unreadable – for me - alphabets). When we arrived, the only public writing I was able to comprehend in Tbilisi were the license plates – all of which start with three letters in Arabic (why? It’s a mystery) then three numbers (and thank goodness the number are the same!).

So I spent the better part of the first month here staring at the license plates and experiencing high energy streams-of-consciousness…. MOM (gee, I miss her), CAD (as in, “oh, you….!), MGM (movies, anyone?), PAP (as in smear?), AMA (the doctor is in), LOO (the doctor is, uh, out), GTO (vrooooom), SER (“to be”, in Spanish), EEK! ACK! AAH! OOH! (crossing the hot sand at the beach), ARK(ansas), APR (‘financing’), TIT (wonder if Roger’s seen that one), and many which did not need any thinking like WWW, or KKK. I became a license plate junkie, ever on the lookout for new and unusual three letter combinations that meant something in a language I did know, somewhere. Why? Because they were the only things in the country I could read!

We had to change that.

Georgian is considered one of the oldest languages in the world. Some linguists believe that the Basque language (in Northern Spain) is a branch of the Caucasian languages but other linguists deny the link. They both do sound like they contain way too many consonants if that’s any measure. Georgian is spoken by 32 million people (which may someday be 32,000,001) and is one of 40 native languages spoken in the Caucasus region. It is spoken by more people than any of the others and has a rich literary tradition includes poetic, scientific, and political writing that stretches back for centuries. The alphabet is thought to have arisen sometime in the 400s AD. It is written from left to right, and for most of us, this is a blessing. The script is called “Mkhedruli" which means secular writing (having replaced the church writing “Khutsuri” in the 1000s AD). To be sure, there are volumes written about the fascinating history of the Georgian language.

The Georgian alphabet is quite pretty (in my humble opinion) but since I don’t have the software for the Georgian alphabet on this computer, I cannot show you more than you see in my title (which I had to copy off the Internet). Besides, look at it carefully against the Arabic letter translation next to it. You now know seven letters in the Georgian alphabet! K-A-R-T-U-L and I, and there are only 26 more to learn.

The hard ones.

My father, upon seeing something written in Georgian exclaimed, “Why look! It’s a bunch of paperclips!” Which, quite frankly, seems a fairly accurate description.

Being truly interested in learning to speak and read Georgian, I hired the friend of office colleague, a nice girl named Ani (say: On-ee) which she wrote in English, “Any” (which seemed to beg the question any what? So I write it A-N-I, thank you very much). She spent a lot of time the first day repeating over and over with me how to saw things like, ‘I am French’, ‘I speak Russian’, ‘I am Italian’, etc… which was a bit frustrating since I will never say those things and anyone who would have those things to say to me would say them in French or Russian or Italian – not Georgian, right?

I am learning to write in Georgian. Those pretty curly ‘paperclips’ are easy to write and I quite like the writing. I do read it, too – but veeeerrrrrrryyyyy slowly. I find that it is still impossible for me to read store signs and billboards out the car windows because we move too fast. When I do read something that is not a moving target, however, I have to do it without any well-meaning Georgian friend or colleague within earshot because they cannot bear to hear me stammer slowly, “ m-ay viiii-tsss-khooov-r-…” and BOOM, the sentence is finished in a flash. By them. And of course, just because I can read a word does not indicate that I have the foggiest notion what the word I’ve just read, means.

Over the last seven lessons we have moved into spelling and simple verbs, conjugated in the first, second and third person singular (I, you, (s)he forms). I am learning verbs I can actually use like - to be, - to do and - to have. There are two different verbs that mean to have: one can have a husband, children, wife, car, or horse (there is some fascinating cultural anthropology concealed in that one); or one can have a book, a sandwich, a difficult teacher, a long vacation, etc.

I am also learning verbs I can’t actually use currently. ‘To take a photo’, and ‘to get up’ are two that spring to mind. I mean, if I’m getting up do I need to mention that to anyone? And while I recognize the value of the following, I am still amused by –to eat and –to drink. I eat eggs. Well, yeah, if they’re sitting on a plate in front of me, the person receiving my message might question the purpose of the discussion.

What about the two most important verbs in every foreign language, -to need, and –to want? I need a taxi, I want the tomatoes, I need a doctor, I want the book…. Why aren’t we learning these? Perhaps because they are difficult? Or perhaps they are too hard, in Ani’s opinion, for my English-speaking mouth to get around. “Too hard to pronounce?” You ask.

Oh yes, I haven’t mentioned anything about Georgian pronunciation, have I. For good reason. There are sounds made in this language that are not designed for human beings: coughing sounds in the back of the throat; clicking sounds under the tongue; croaking sounds from way below the vocal cords. I ask you, how can it be a sound used in speech if it comes from BELOW the vocal cords? Of course the toughest sounds in any Georgian word are invariably followed by a long string of consonants. The economy of vowels in the Georgian language is way too thin for my vocal pocketbook.

As the lessons progressed and I embraced whatever verbs I was offered (albeit –to drink and –to write a poem), I realized sadly that I might never be able to tell my Georgian-only speaking friends that one of my three favorite activities is reading (the other two are eating and taking a long warm shower, not necessarily at the same time). ‘To read’, or rather “I read,” sounds like this: M-ay v-g-h-ee-t-(huj)-u-l-obe… looks easy doesn’t it. It would be except that that “g’ at the beginning is that sort of clicking thing deep under the tongue and the sound after the ‘t’ that “huj” thing is a sort of gathering-spit-near-the-tonsils sound.

I also came to the conclusion that I would either have to drive everywhere myself or walk because I would be incapable of telling a taxi driver “I live on Oniashvivli Street” Oh, Oniashvili is the easy one. The verb, –to live is however, a verbal stunner. I live = m-ay v-d-s-k-h-ov-r-obe. You laugh? Pronounce, vdskh three times, fast, making sure that the kh comes from an undisclosed location somewhere in the bowels of your esophagus. Then throw the rest of it on the end. Yeah. I know.

And the best part is….. I work on these. I do! Ani makes the sound and then I make the sound and she flusters, “no, no, no! Like this…,” and makes the sound again – a sound that, to me, is IDENTICAL to the spit gathering I myself have just done. This goes on over and over and over again until I am frustrated that my normally very sharp ear is being slighted by her insistence that I am not successfully repeating these sounds. So we move on to other things.

Of course, the best part of learning any language is coming to terms with using it. I make people all over Tbilisi smile when I wish them a good morning: dila mshvidobisa, or ask them how they are: rogora khargh? I would tell you how those two phrases are pronounced correctly, but I’m not sure I could. And of course if someone does actually tell me how (s)he is, I can only smile weakly as if to say I’m glad, but I have no idea what you have just told me. They smile, of course, because they are too kind to mutter, “You are butchering this fine ancient tongue in my presence.” Or because they are thinking, “Yeah, yeah, wise guy, once you get a handle on the Georgian language we will switch to speaking in Russian so you cannot understand us.” Did I mention that even the dogs in Georgia are tri-lingual? Georgian-Russian-Other (and the other is not necessarily Azeri but is English or French or Spanish or German). I used to feel so proud about my English-Spanish skills, too….

To be fair, of course, my only real Georgian friends, the office staff (where would I meet others?), seem pleased that I am taking up the fight. A couple of them sought me out privately to tell me that they were very proud that I was learning their language. For me, personally, learning to speak their language is a way of letting them know that I greatly respect them and their heritage. The rewards are rare but on occasion someone says, “Wow, you have really great pronunciation”, or, “most foreigners can’t pronounce that.” Ha! I think, they haven’t watched me gagging and gargling and gulping with Ani. But most often they grin widely, nod, and then answer me with machine-gun-fire rapidity, leaving me clueless but more determined to reach a point where I can actually read and truly speak this lovely, complicated, ancient tongue.

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