Kartvelian languages

The Kartvelian language family—also called South Caucasian or Kartvelic—is native to the South Caucasus and is mainly spoken in Georgia. It is one of the world’s primary language families, with no proven connections to any other language group. About 5 million people worldwide speak Georgian, the family’s most prominent member and the only one with a literary tradition. The earliest known written evidence in any Kartvelian language is an Old Georgian inscription from a now-ruined Georgian Orthodox monastery near Bethlehem. All Kartvelian languages are written using Georgian scripts.

Georgian is the official language of Georgia, used by 90% of the population for literature and business. It has its own distinctive alphabet; the oldest surviving literary text dates from the 5th century AD. The script’s alphabetical order largely follows the Greek alphabet, except for letters representing uniquely Georgian sounds, which appear at the end. Mingrelian has historically been only a spoken, regional language, with speakers relying on standard Georgian for writing. No known Mingrelian grammar books or dictionaries existed until the late 19th century. Limited publications in Mingrelian appeared during the 20th and 21st centuries, but printing in it remains controversial, seen as a departure from its traditional non-literary role. Laz was written mainly between 1927 and 1937, and later in Turkey using the Latin alphabet. It is endangered, as speakers are shifting to Turkish.

The family comprises four closely related languages. Svan (ლუშნუ ნინ, *lušnu nin*) has about 35,000–40,000 native speakers in Georgia, mostly in the mountainous northwestern region of Svaneti and the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia. The Georgian-Zan (or Karto-Zan) branch includes Georgian (ქართული ენა, *kartuli ena*), with roughly 4 million native speakers, mainly in Georgia, plus communities in Russia, Turkey, Iran, Israel, and EU countries (current numbers unknown). Judaeo-Georgian (ყივრული ენა, *kivruli ena*), with some 85,000 speakers, is the only Kartvelian Jewish dialect; its status is debated among scholars. The Zan (or Colchian) branch includes Mingrelian (მარგალური ნინა, *margaluri nina*), with about 500,000 native speakers in 1989, mainly in western Georgia’s Samegrelo region and Abkhazia (now only in Gali district). The 1990s war with Georgia caused the expulsion of most ethnic Georgians from Abkhazia, mostly Mingrelians; today Georgians in Abkhazia (mostly Mingrelians) make up 18% of the population, and in Gali district 98.2%. Displaced Mingrelians are scattered across government-controlled Georgia, with dense clusters in Tbilisi and Zugdidi. Laz (ლაზური ნენა, *lazuri nena*) had 22,000 native speakers in 1980, mostly along Turkey’s Black Sea coast and about 2,000 in Adjara, Georgia.

The connections among these languages were first noted by Johann Anton Güldenstädt in his 1773 classification of Caucasus languages, and later confirmed by G. Rosen, Marie-Félicité Brosset, Franz Bopp, and others in the 1840s. Zan is the branch containing Mingrelian and Laz. Glottochronological analysis by Georgi Klimov dates the split of Proto-Kartvelian into Svan and Proto-Georgian-Zan to the 19th century BC, and the further split into Georgian and Zan to the 8th century BC, though he stressed these dates are preliminary. A 2023 study using Bayesian linguistic phylogenetics, along with archaeological, ethnoecological, and genetic data, suggests a much earlier divergence—around 7600 years before present, in the Early Copper Age. That study indicates that Proto-Karto-Zan (Proto-Georgian-Zan) was likely spoken by pre-Kura-Araxes and Kura-Araxes farmers in the Mtkvari (Kura) River watershed during the Copper and Bronze Ages.

No relationship with other language families—including Northwest or Northeast Caucasian—has been demonstrated. Attempts to link Kartvelian to proposed families like Nostratic have fallen out of favor. Certain grammatical similarities with Basque, especially in case systems, have been noted, but the hypothesis of a connection—often grouping Caucasian languages with other ancient non-Indo-European and non-Semitic languages of the Near East—lacks conclusive evidence. Any similarities may result from areal influences, with heavy borrowing in both directions between Kartvelian and North Caucasian languages.