Book Title:
The Origin of the
Georgian Literary Language

               and its Prospects           

Author: T. Putkaradze

                                Native language is the face of personality People
                         create language and language creates people
               National language is the measure of the
           country’s dignity -          T.Putkaradze
                                                                                                                                    

                    

Preface

In the history of Georgia there exist two most important periods of realization of the idea of the formation of unified and powerful state. In both periods the spread and usage of the Georgian language is taken as the chief criteria for the strength and unity of the country.

Let’s compare the periods:

Kuji-Pharnavaz epoc says: “there was no other language spoken besides Georgian in the country“ and Grigol Khandzteli’s epoc says: “Georgia is the name of many parts of the country where the divine service is performed in the Georgian language and people pray for God in Georgian“.

In the first period, Kuji, prince of Egrisi, played the essential role for the unification of the country, in the second period the same is done by Bagra-tioni kings brought up in the south-west (Tao) and the west (Egrisi) Georgia.

The man who had created the asomtavruli (Capital Georgian alphabet) was a great scholar as he had seen with amazing precision the system of the Georgian sounds.

Namely the scholar had determined and ascribed letters to vowel phonemes (a a, e e, o o), to consonant phonemes (b b, f p, p p; d d, T t, t ţ; Z ĵ, c c, w ċ, z z, s s; j j, C č, W ĉ, J ž, S š; g g, q k, k ķ; Ë ĥ, y q; R ğ, x ħ; m m, n n, r r, l l, h h) and to sonant allo-phones (i i, É y; u u, E v(w))...

The creator of the Georgian alphabet based the asomtavrul,i capital Georgian alphabet, on the Common-Kartvelian sound system and not on one of the dialects or on Koine data. Consequently, when seeking for the pivotal language model as the point of departure for the archaic Georgian literary language, important is the logical dating of Common-Kartvelian and Asomtavruli.