Mother Language day in Georgia

On a 14th of April Georgia celebrates Mother Language Day. As you may know, Georgian language is one of the most oldest languages in the world. Today I wanna tell you why we celebrate this day and also some facts about Georgian language.

April 14 is day of the Georgian language, let’s begin telling our story!

So, in 1977 Georgian Supreme Soviet drafted a new Constitution of the Georgian SSR, in which Georgian was no longer declared to be official language in the republic. They made an attempt to give an equally official status to the Russian language.This move led to demonstrations in the country. On 14th April of 1978, Thousands of people protested on the streets of Tbilisi. Following the protest, Soviet authorities had to abandon amendments to the constitution concerning the status of languages in Georgia.Since 1990, April 14 has been celebrated as Day of the Georgian Language.

There are some interesting facts about Georgian language:

1.Hello in Georgian means “Victoty”

The standard greeting ‘Hello’ in Georgian, ‘Gamarjoba’, means ‘victory’ and reflects country’s complicated past of endless attacks and war. Similar to ‘Gamarjoba’, ‘good morning/evening’ in Georgian would be ‘dila/saghamo mshvidobisa‘ which means ‘morning/evening of peace.’

2.There are three other languages spoken in Georgia

The Georgian language has at least 18 dialects. Standard Georgian is based on Kartvelian dialect. Those dialects still retain their unique features regarding morphology, syntax, vocabulary, and phonology, and are similar to each other. Additionally, there are three other languages, Mengrelian, Svan and Laz, spoken in the country. These languages are common in the western part of Georgia.

3.You can tell which region a person is from by their surname

Georgian family names are deeply linked to the regions of Georgia, and you can easily guess where that person is from by their name. As people move around the country over time, this might not be so accurate today, but some surnames are very easy to identify.

4.Georgian has many foreign words

Georgian has borrowed many words from its neighboring countries and investors. The Turkish, Persian and Arabic languages form a significant source of borrowed words.