Georgian language

Georgian
Georgian
Kartuli; ქართული
Pronunciation	[kʰɑrtʰuli ɛnɑ]
Region	Georgia (Including Abkhazia and South Ossetia) ; Russia, United States, Israel, Ukraine, Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan
Native speakers	3.7 million (2014)e18
Language family	Kartvelian Karto-Zan Georgian; ;
Early forms:	Old Georgian Georgian;
Dialects	Georgian dialects
Writing system	Georgian script; Georgian Braille
Official status
Official language in	Georgia
Regulated by	Cabinet of Georgia
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ka
ISO 639-2	geo (B); kat (T)
ISO 639-3	kat
Linguasphere	42-CAB-baa – bac
	This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.
	This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Georgian (Ⴕⴀⴐⴇⴓⴊⴈ Ⴄⴌⴀ, kʰartʰuli ena) is the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.

This language has its own Wikipedia project. See the Georgian language edition.

Georgian is the primary language of about 3.9 million people in Georgia itself (83 percent of the population), and of another 500,000 abroad (chiefly in Turkey, Iran, Russia, the United States and Europe). It is the literary language for all ethnographic groups of Georgian people, especially those who speak other South Caucasian languages (or Kartvelian languages): Svans, Megrelians, and the Laz. Gruzinic, or "Kivruli", which is sometimes considered a separate Jewish language, is spoken by an additional 20,000 in Georgia and 65,000 elsewhere (primarily 60,000 in Israel).

Georgian Language Media

Georgian alphabet from The American Cyclopædia, 1879
Road sign in Mtavruli and Latin scripts
"Mshrali khidi" (dry bridge) bilingual construction signboard in Georgian (Mtavruli) and Italian in Tbilisi.
The last verse of Shota Rustaveli's romance The Knight in the Panther's Skin illustrating the appearance of the Georgian script.
Recording of a middle-aged male speaker reading Article 1.