The Georgian language and its three alphabets: a traveller’s primer with 40 useful phrases

Georgian (ქართული, kartuli) is not related to Russian, Turkish, Armenian, or any Indo-European language a visitor is likely to know. It belongs to the small Kartvelian (South Caucasian) family, and it is written in its own script, which exists in three historical forms, Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri, and Mkhedruli, inscribed together by UNESCO in 2016 as a single living cultural heritage. You do not need fluency to travel well. A working set of forty phrases in the modern Mkhedruli script, read phonetically, covers greetings, taxis, restaurants, and shops in both Tbilisi and the regions.

This primer gives you the alphabet story in brief, a pronunciation guide for the sounds that trip up English speakers, and a 40-phrase table organised by situation. It closes with a note on where Russian and English actually get you through, which varies more by generation and region than most guidebooks admit. For a guide who speaks the language and the context, see our Old Tbilisi Walking Tour or book a Licensed Private Guide by the Day.

Where Georgian comes from: the Kartvelian family

Georgian is the literary and state language of the Kartvelian family, which also includes Svan (spoken in Svaneti), Mingrelian or Megrelian (spoken in Samegrelo), and Laz (spoken on the Black Sea coast near the Turkish border, in Adjara and beyond). These are separate languages, not dialects, though all four share a common ancestor and none is related to Russian, Persian, Turkish, or Armenian, despite centuries of contact with all four. Britannica’s overview of the Kartvelian languages is a reliable starting point if you want the linguistic detail beyond this primer, see Britannica on the Kartvelian languages. In practice, almost everyone who speaks Svan, Mingrelian, or Laz at home also speaks and writes standard Georgian, which is the sole language of schooling, media, and public signage across the country.

Three alphabets, one living script

Georgian has used an alphabet unrelated to Latin, Cyrillic, or Greek for around sixteen centuries, and it has existed in three forms rather than one. Asomtavruli, the oldest, rounded and monumental, appears on early church inscriptions. Nuskhuri, more angular, developed for liturgical manuscripts and is still used today alongside Asomtavruli capitals in church texts and calendars. Mkhedruli, the “military” or secular script, evolved from the ninth century onward and is the only form in everyday use now, on road signs, menus, and phone keyboards. UNESCO inscribed all three together in 2016 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, recognising them as a single continuous tradition rather than three unrelated alphabets, see the official record at UNESCO’s inscription page for the three Georgian writing systems. For travellers, this means you will see Nuskhuri and Asomtavruli mainly on church walls and in the Patriarchate’s calendars, while everything you need to read day to day, bus destinations, price tags, shop names, is in Mkhedruli, which is also what this guide uses.

A well-told account of why the script survived Russification and Sovietisation, and why Georgians treat it as a marker of identity, is the BBC’s feature on the subject, see BBC Travel on the Georgian alphabet. It is worth five minutes before you arrive, because it explains why a stranger might thank you warmly simply for attempting a greeting in their script.

How to pronounce Georgian: sounds that trip up visitors

Georgian has no gendered nouns, no articles, and a largely phonetic spelling, which helps. The difficulty is a set of consonants that English does not distinguish. Georgian contrasts plain, aspirated, and ejective versions of the same sound, for example k, k’, and q’. You will not master ejectives from a page, and nobody expects you to, but three practical points help:

• Stress is generally light and falls early in the word; do not over-stress the last syllable as English speakers tend to.
• Consonant clusters at the start of words are common and genuinely pronounced in full, for example gvprtskvni (“you peel us”) is an often-cited tongue-twister; restaurant names like mtsvadi (skewered meat) or khinkali (dumplings) are said exactly as spelled, syllable by syllable.
• “kh” is a harsh, throat-clearing sound similar to the Scottish “loch”, and appears constantly, including in khachapuri and Tbilisi’s own alphabet.

Transliteration below uses apostrophes nowhere, favouring the simplest readable spelling, which will get you understood even if an academic transliteration guide would use diacritics.

Forty phrases for the road: greetings, taxis, restaurants, shops

The table groups phrases by where you will actually need them. Read the transliteration left to right as English syllables.

“Gaumarjos” deserves a note: it is the word you will hear at every supra, a toast meaning roughly “to victory”, and replying with the same word is normal rather than inventing a clever response. For a full evening of toasts, song, and context, our Supra Evening with a Tamada is built around exactly this.

Numbers beyond ten and asking for help

Georgian numbers above twenty use a base-twenty system borrowed from an old counting logic, similar structurally to French “quatre-vingts”: twenty is otsi, thirty is otsdaati (literally twenty-and-ten), forty is ormotsi (two-twenty). This is useful to recognise on price tags rather than to produce yourself; most market vendors and taxi drivers will show you a number on a phone screen or calculator if the spoken figure is unclear, and this is a normal, expected way to confirm a price, not a sign of distrust. For anything beyond a phrasebook exchange, three phrases cover most situations: dakhmareba (help), sad aris tualeti? (where is the toilet?), and ekimi (doctor), to which you add dagvchirdeba (we need) if calling for assistance. For any medical concern while travelling, consult a doctor or pharmacist directly rather than relying on a phrase; see our Medical Travel to Tbilisi service if you need an interpreter alongside clinical care.

Russian and English by region: what to actually expect

Coverage is uneven and depends more on generation than on geography alone.

• Tbilisi and Batumi: English is now the default second language among people under roughly thirty-five working in tourism, hotels, and the service industry; menus, museum labels, and transport signage are bilingual or trilingual in Georgian, English, and often Russian.
• Older generations everywhere: Russian remains widely understood among people who were educated before the early 2000s, a legacy of the Soviet school system, and it is often the practical fallback in markets, village guesthouses, and with older taxi drivers outside the capital.
• Rural Kakheti, Racha, Svaneti, and highland regions: English thins out quickly once you leave the main tourist routes; a guide or driver who speaks Georgian is genuinely useful here, not a luxury, which is why most of our multi-day routes, including Mestia & Ushguli and Tusheti — Georgia’s Last Wild Frontier, travel with a Georgian-speaking driver or guide throughout.
• Adjara and the Black Sea coast: tourism-driven English is strong in Batumi itself, patchier in the Khulo and Goderdzi highlands inland.

Attitudes toward Russian are not uniform and have shifted since 2022 with a large increase in Russian-speaking residents and visitors; some younger Georgians prefer to respond in English or Georgian even when they understand Russian. A polite “inglisurad laparakobt?” before defaulting to Russian is generally well received.

A note on reading signs and menus

Mkhedruli has thirty-three letters, each representing one sound consistently, so once you can match the shapes to sounds, reading aloud becomes mechanical even without comprehension. This is enough to recognise cognates and loanwords, airport signage mixes Georgian, English, and sometimes Russian, and city transport apps in Tbilisi now offer Latin transliteration as an option. Offline translation apps with camera input work reasonably well on printed Mkhedruli text, though they still stumble on handwritten menus in smaller village guesthouses.

Practical summary

• Georgian is a Kartvelian language unrelated to Russian, Turkish, or Armenian, written in its own script with three historical forms, only Mkhedruli is used day to day now.
• UNESCO recognised the three writing systems together in 2016 as a single living heritage, verify current status at ich.unesco.org.
• Learn ten to fifteen core phrases well: gamarjoba, madloba, ra ghirs?, sad aris…?, and the numbers one to ten cover most transactions.
• English works reliably in Tbilisi and Batumi tourism settings and among people under roughly thirty-five; Russian still bridges gaps with older generations and in rural areas.
• In highland regions, Svaneti, Tusheti, Khevsureti, travel with a Georgian-speaking guide or driver rather than relying on language apps alone.
• A translation app with camera input is a reasonable backup for reading Mkhedruli signage and printed menus.

Sources

• UNESCO inscription, three Georgian writing systems
• UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity
• Georgian National Museum
• National Parliamentary Library of Georgia
• Civil.ge – News and Analysis