Languages ​​of Georgia

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Multi-ethnic Georgia is a country in the Caucasus, which has been known since ancient times to be rich in people and languages . Many ethnic groups live in remote areas and only speak their own language. A total of 20-30 languages ​​from six different language families are spoken in Georgia today.

Georgian is the official language

Important ethnic groups (nationalities) in the Caucasus region.

The official language of Georgia is Georgian , which is spoken by around 4 million people. It belongs to the South Caucasian language family and has had its own alphabet since the 5th century . Over 80% of Georgian citizens (3.22 million of 3.71 million inhabitants in 2014) are classified as ethnic Georgians, for which in Georgia traditionally (from the Middle Ages through modern times and Soviet times until today) all speakers of South Caucasian languages are counted, including the approximately 500,000 Mingrelians , the approximately 25,000 Swans and the (on the Georgian side of the border) approximately 2000 Lasen (see adjacent map), because they speak Georgian as a common written language in addition to their own languages ​​and because they belong to the Georgian Orthodox Church .

Other major national languages

Other important languages ​​in the country are also South Caucasian Mingrelian (500,000 speakers), Indo-European Armenian (450,000 speakers), Russian (the number of speakers has fallen sharply since 1991), the Turkic language Azerbaijani (around 300,000 speakers), the the West Caucasian scoring Abkhaz and ostiranische language Ossetian (the latter each have around 100 thousand. speaker).

Languages ​​in Georgia with at least 100,000 speakers

Classification of the languages ​​spoken in Georgia

The languages ​​of Georgia belong to six different language families. Three of them - South Caucasian, West Caucasian and East Caucasian - are considered to be autochthonous Caucasian languages . From today's point of view, these three groups are not related to one another. The three other language families - Indo-European , Turkic and Afro-Asian - include the languages ​​whose carriers immigrated to the Caucasus only later (Armenians since the 7th century BC). The following classification describes the relationships and the number of speakers of all languages ​​spoken in Georgia.

Note on the number of speakers: They refer exclusively to the speakers of these languages in Georgia . "S2" includes native speakers and speakers who have learned this language.

Distribution area of South Caucasian (Kartwelischer) languages , the speakers of which in Georgia are traditionally all part of the Georgian ethnic group .
  • South Caucasian (Kartwelisch) A total of 4.5 million speakers in Georgia
    • Kartuli
      • Georgian (Kartuli, Grusinisch) (4 million speakers, S2 5 million)
        • Dialects : Imeretic, Letschchumisch, Gurianisch, Ajarisch, Imerchev (in Turkey), Kachetisch, Ingilo (in Azerbaijan), Tush, Chevsur, Mochev, Pschav, Mtiul, Feredjan (in Iran), Mes'chur-Javachuri. Judeo-Georgian .
    • Sanisch
    • Swan
  • West Caucasian A total of 100,000 speakers in Georgia
    • Abkhazian-Abasinian
      • Abkhazian (100,000) dialects: Bzyb, Abschui, Samurzakan.

The number of speakers comes from Ethnologue (5th edition 2005), the Fischer Weltalmanach 2006 and the specialist literature on the individual language families. The classification is based on the web link given below. The language families and their branches are shown in bold (only the branches for which there are languages ​​spoken in Georgia are given).

literature

  • Klimov, Georgij A .: Introduction to Caucasian Linguistics . By Jost Gippert. Buske, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-87548-060-0

Web link

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Ethnic self-information from the 2014 census by district, the name in the top line Sakartvelo is the Georgian name for all of Georgia.