According to Shoe Wiki, the Georgian language (k ‛ art ‛ uli ena) belongs to the southern (better called south-western or Cartvelian) group of Caucasian languages (v.); it is the only Caucasian language that boasts an ancient literature. Although Georgian extends in an arc throughout the territory inhabited by Cartvelian populations, it is solidly united and considerable dialectal differences are noticeable only on the periphery. The distinction between western (Imerî) and eastern (Amerî), is not founded on linguistic bases, but only on anthropological and ethnic grounds, since the differences between Georgian (Grusino) properly so-called, that is Eastern, and Hymeric (Guric and Agidrico) are minimal. As a little more differentiated oriental dialects we can mention: the psciavico (p ‘ š avuri) spoken by about 15,000 people in the south of Chevsuria, on the banks of the Aragva and the Jora; Chevsurico (khevsuruli), spoken by just over 10,000 people in Chevsuria; the tuscio (t’usuri), spoken by less than 10,000 people on the Caucasus dewlap; l ‘ ingiloi, spoken by about 15,000 Georgians Islamized of Zakatalye district; finally the mthiulic (mt ‛ iuli) spoken by some mountain tribes north of Psciavia and Chevsuria.
The Cartvelian languages, compared to the Northern Caucasians, are much less archaic and simpler. Georgian does not have strong accents, but once it must have had a violent expiratory accent, probably due to which many vowels have fallen, as appears from the comparison of Georgian with other Cartvelic languages (eg Georg. Tba “lake”, cf. mingr. toba, laso tiba, toba). The tonic accent generally falls on the penultimate in the bisyllables, on the antipenultimate in the plurisyllables, but it is not very sensitive. Cartvelian languages do not know the so-called class or motion elements (cf. IX, pp. 483-85) and have no gender distinction. The declension of nouns is done by means of suffixes; the cases are eleven; the plural is formed either with – n – or more frequently with – and b -; in oblique cases the plural formed with – and b – adds the same suffixes as the singular to the augmented stem of the pluralizing infix; so p. ex. mama “father” gen. mamis (a); dat. mamas (a); ergative mamam ; instrument. mamit ‛(a) etc.; nom. plur. mamebi (or mamani); gen. mam – eb – isa o (mama – tha); dat. mam. eb – sa (or mama – tha), etc. Interesting is the very frequent accumulation of declension suffixes on the same noun, p. ex. k ‛ alak ‛ sa Samaritel – t ‛ a – sa ” in the city of the Samaritans (implied: he goes) “where in gen. plur. Samaritel – t ‛ a suff. – knows of the dative (which also indicates motion to place). Common to all Caucasian languages is the passive conception of the verb transitive (or at least that is what most linguists think), so a sentence like “the hunter killed the deer” is rendered in Georg. with monadire – m (an) irem – i mokla i.e. lit. “by the hunter (ergative) the deer (nominative) was killed”. The Georgian lexicon has assimilated not a few Armenian, Persian, Turkish and Russian elements.
The Georgian language has two special alphabets; the one called khu c̣ uri or ecclesiastical (from khu c̣ esi “priest”) used in classical and religious literature and composed of 38 upper and lower case letters; the other, called mkhedruli (from mkhedari “warrior”) is the one still commonly used; it consists of 38 letters that have a single shape for upper and lower case. The khu c̣ uri alphabet is very closely related to the Armenian alphabet (see IV, p. 431) and indeed, according to Armenian historians, it was invented by Mesrop himself. The mkhedruli alphabet, according to the tradition handed down by Georgian historians, it is older than the khu c̣ uri and was conceived by the first Georgian king Farnabazo, but in reality it arose around the century. X, as a cursive modification of the alphabet khu c̣ uri.
In the following table, the first two lines give the script khu c̣ uri uppercase and lowercase, the third the mkhedruli script, the fourth the transcription used here (below, in brackets, the main variants); the fifth line gives the pronunciation; letters whose transcription is preceded by a † are no longer in use.