Georgian writing: features, history and origin, examples

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:48

Georgian writing is represented by three variants: Asomtavrul, Nuskhuri and Mkhedrul. Although the systems differ in appearance, they are all unambiguous, that is, their letters have the same name and alphabetical order, and are also written horizontally from left to right. Of the three Georgian letters, Mkhedruli was once royal.

It was he who was mainly used in the State Chancellery. This form is now standard in modern Georgian and related Kartvelian languages. Asomtavruli and Nuskhuri are used only in the Orthodox Church - in ceremonial religious texts and iconography.

History

Georgian writing is unique in its appearance. Its exact origin has not yet been established. Structurally, however, their alphabetical order largely follows that of Greek, with the exception of the letters denoting unique sounds, which are grouped at the end of the list. Initially, the letter consisted of 38 characters, but in the modern world there are only 33 of them, because five letters are currentlytime outdated.

The number of Georgian characters used in other Kartvelian segments varies. Megrelian uses 36 letters, 33 of which are current. One obsolete Georgian letter and two additional letters refer to Mingrelian Svan.

Laz uses the same 33 current characters as Mingrelian and obsolete letters borrowed from Greek. There are a total of 35 items.

The fourth Kartvelian style (Swan) is not usually used. When written, they use the same characters as Megrelian, with an additional obsolete alphabet, and sometimes with diacritics for its many vowels.

Georgian letter received the national intangible cultural heritage status in the country in 2015. It was included in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016.

Georgian script, origin

It is not known exactly where the alphabet came from. Among Georgian and foreign scientists there is no complete agreement on the date of its creation, who developed it, what influenced this process. It is worth noting several options at once.

The first version is attested as the Georgian script of Asomtavruli, which dates back to at least the 5th century. Other species were formed much later. Most scholars attribute the creation of the Georgian script to the process of Christianization of Iberia (not to be confused with the Iberian Peninsula), the main kingdom of Kartli. Therefore, the alphabet was most likely created between the conversion of this country under the kingMirian III and the inscriptions of Bir el-Kutta in 430, simultaneously with the Armenian alphabet.

It was first used to translate the Bible and other Christian literature into the local language by monks in Georgia and Palestine. Professor Levan Chilashvili's dating of the fragmented Asomtavruli inscriptions he discovered in the ruined town of Nekresi (Georgia's easternmost province of Kakheti) in the 1980s has not been accepted.

Linguists

Georgian tradition, first attested in the medieval chronicle “The Life of the Kings of Kartli” (circa 800), attributes the alphabet to a pre-Christian origin and names the ruler Pharnavaz I (3rd century BC) as its inventor. This variant is currently considered legendary. It is rejected by scholarly consensus as no archaeological evidence has been found.

Rapp believes that the tradition is an attempt by the Georgian church to refute an earlier system, according to which the alphabet was invented by the Armenian scholar Mesrop Mashtots and is a local application of the Iranian model. In it, the primordial form, or rather, its creation, is attributed to the kings, as was the case with the main social institutions. Georgian linguist Tamaz Gamkrelidze offers an alternative interpretation of the tradition in the pre-Christian use of foreign scripts (Aramaic alloglottography) to write Georgian texts.

Church question

Another point of contention among scholars is the role of foreign clerics in this process. Based ona number of specialists and medieval sources, Mesrop Mashtots (the generally recognized creator of the Armenian alphabet) also founded the Georgian, Caucasian and Albanian script. This tradition originates in the writings of Koryun, a fifth-century historian and biographer of Mashtots. It also contained quotes from Donald Rayfield and James R. Russell. But this teaching has been criticized by scholars from both Georgia and the West.

The main argument was that judging Koryun's approach is not very reliable, even in later interpolation. Other scholars cite the author's statements without regard to their validity. However, many agree that Armenian clerics (if not Mashtots himself) must have played a role in the creation of the Georgian script.

Pre-Christian period

Another controversy concerns the main influences on the Georgian alphabet, as scholars debate whether it was inspired by Greek or Semitic writing. This question arises because the characters are similar to Aramaic characters. True, recent historiography focuses on more similarities with the Greek alphabet than with others. This statement is based on the order and numerical value of the letters. Some scholars have suggested certain pre-Christian Georgian cultural symbols or clan markers as a possible inspiration for some of the letters.

Asomtavruli

How do you write a Georgian letter? Asomtavruli is the oldest folk script. This word means "capitalsymbols": from aso (ასო) "letter" and mtavari (მთავარი) "head". Despite its name, this "capital" type is unicameral, like the modern Georgian Mkhedruli.

The oldest Asomtavruli inscriptions found to date date back to the 5th century and are located in Bir el-Kutt and Bolnisi.

From the 9th century, the Nuskhuri script begins to dominate, and the role of Asomtavruli decreases. However, epigraphic monuments of the 10th-18th centuries continued to be created in the first version of the letter. Asomtavruli in this late period became more decorative. In most of the Georgian manuscripts of the 9th century, written in the Nuskhuri script, the ancient version was used for the titles and the first letters of the chapters. However, some manuscripts written entirely in Asomtavruli can be found up to the 11th century.

Nuskhuri

Georgian handwriting really looks very nice. Nuskhuri is the second national variant. The name of this species comes from nuskha (ნუსხა), which means "inventory" or "schedule". Nuskhuri was soon supplemented by Asomtavruli in religious manuscripts. This combination (Khutsuri) is mainly used in hagiography.

Nuskhuri first appeared in the 9th century as a graphic version of Asomtavruli. The oldest inscription was found in the church of Ateni Sioni. It dates back to 835 AD. And the most ancient of the surviving manuscripts of Nuskhuri date back to 864 AD. e. This writing has become dominant over Asomtavruli since the 10th century.

Mkhedruli

It is quite difficult to answer the question of howcalled the Georgian letter, because there are several options today. Mkhedruli is the third and current national species. The letter literally means "cavalry" or "military". Derived from mkhedari (მხედარი) meaning "rider", "knight", "warrior", and "cavalier".

Mkhedruli is bicameral, written with capital letters called Mtavruli (მხედრული). Nowadays, Mtavruli is commonly used in text in headings or to highlight a word. It is known that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was sometimes used in Latin and Cyrillic scripts, for capital proper names or the initial word in a sentence.

Mkhedruli first appears in the X century. The oldest Georgian letter was found in the church of Ateni Sioni. It dates back to 982 AD. The second ancient text, written in the Mkhedruli style, was found in the 11th century royal charters of King Bagrat IV of Georgia. Such a script was mainly used then in Georgia for all kinds of government letters, historical documents, manuscripts and inscriptions. That is, Mkhedruli was used only for non-religious purposes and represented civil, royal and secular options.

This style became more and more dominant over the other two, although Khutsuri (a mixture of Nuskhuri with Asomtavruli) was used until the beginning of the 19th century. Mkhedruli became the universal writing system of Georgia outside the Church only during this period. It happened with the creation and development of printed national fonts. The peculiarities of Georgian writing are really surprising.

Arrangement of signs

In the punctuation of Asomtavruli and Nuskhuri, various combinations of dots were used as word separators and to separate phrases, sentences and paragraphs. In monumental inscriptions and manuscripts of the 5th - 10th centuries, they were written like this: (-,=) and (=-). In the 10th century, Ephraim Mtsire introduced clusters of one (), two (:), three (჻) and six (჻჻) dots (later sometimes small circles) to indicate growing breaks in the text. One sign meant a small stop (presumably a simple space). The two punctuations marked or separated particular words. Three points for more stopping. Six characters were supposed to indicate the end of the sentence.

Reformation

Starting from the 11th century, symbols resembling an apostrophe and a comma began to appear. The first was used to denote an interrogative word, but the second appeared at the end of an exclamatory sentence. Since the 12th century, they have been replaced by the semicolon (Greek question mark). In the 18th century, Patriarch Anton I of Georgia again reformed the system with various punctuation marks, such as single and double dots used to indicate complete, incomplete, and final sentences. Today, the Georgian language uses punctuation only in the international use of the Latin alphabet.