Telavi

Enough Georgian for three days

You will not learn Georgian. You can learn twelve words and read the alphabet in an afternoon, and here both go further than they would almost anywhere.

18 August 2026 · 7 min read

The word that will do the most work for you is გემრიელია — gemrielia — “it’s delicious”. Say it once, at the right table, and the rest of the afternoon changes shape.

You are not going to learn Georgian in three days. You can learn about twelve words, and you can learn to read the alphabet in an afternoon, and in this country both of those go further than they would almost anywhere else, because almost nobody bothers.

What the language actually is

Georgian is not related to anything you know. It is not Indo-European, not Slavic, not Turkic. It belongs to the Kartvelian family, whose other members are three small languages also spoken in Georgia and nowhere else. It has no grammatical gender, no articles, no capital letters, and verb forms that will not be relevant to you this week.

The modern script is Mkhedruli, and it has 33 letters. Two older scripts, Mrgvlovani and Nuskhuri, are still in liturgical use, and the fact that all three are alive at once is why UNESCO put “the living culture of three writing systems of the Georgian alphabet” on its intangible heritage list in 2016.

It also has consonant clusters that are genuinely difficult. The party-trick example is გვფრცქვნის — eight consonants before you reach a vowel — which means roughly “he is peeling us”. Nobody will make you say it.

Learning to read it is the good trick

The alphabet is fully phonetic: one letter, one sound, no exceptions worth caring about, and no capitals to double the work. Which means that once you know the 33 shapes you can read a Georgian sign out loud without understanding a word of it — and that turns out to be enormously useful, because half of what you need is a proper noun.

თელავი is Telavi. თბილისი is Tbilisi. მარანი is marani. აფთიაქი is aptiaki — pharmacy. ღვინო is wine. You can find the bakery, the bus and the cellar entirely on phonetics.

An afternoon with a chart does it. The letters that give people trouble are the ones English does not distinguish: ღ is a throaty gh, roughly a French r; ყ is a q made further back than you think possible; and there are pairs like თ/ტ and ქ/კ where one is breathy and one is sharp, and getting them the wrong way round is how k’ari (door) becomes kari (wind).

The twelve words

Georgian	Say	Means
გამარჯობა	ga-mar-JO-ba	Hello — literally something like “victory to you”
გმადლობთ	GMAD-lobt	Thank you (polite). მადლობა, madloba, is the everyday one
ჰო / კი	ho / ki	Yes, in ordinary speech. დიახ, diakh, is the formal one
არა	A-ra	No
ბოდიში	BO-di-shi	Sorry, and also excuse me
რა ღირს?	ra GHIRS	How much is it — the market word
სად არის…?	sad A-ris	Where is…?
კარგი	KAR-gi	Good, fine, OK. You will hear it constantly
გემრიელია	gem-ri-E-li-a	It’s delicious
გაუმარჯოს	gau-MAR-jos	The response to a toast. “Victory to it”
არაფრის	a-RAF-ris	You’re welcome
ნახვამდის	nakh-VAM-dis	Goodbye

That is the whole list. If you learn three of them, learn gamarjoba, madloba and gemrielia, in that order.

სამარხვო — samarkhvo — means Lenten, or fasting food. Georgian Orthodox fasting excludes all animal products, so in practice samarkhvo means vegan, and every Georgian kitchen knows how to cook it without being asked twice.

Ask for the samarkhvo dishes and you will get lobio, pkhali, badrijani, mushrooms, beans, aubergine and most of the pickles, cooked properly rather than assembled by subtraction. It is a far better question than “do you have anything vegetarian”, and it is the reason Georgian food is so easy to eat without meat.

Numbers, and why prices sound strange

For the market, the first ten:

erti, ori, sami, otkhi, khuti, ekvsi, shvidi, rva, tskhra, ati — 1 to 10. And asi, 100.

Then it gets interesting. Georgian counts in twenties, like Basque and old French. Twenty is otsi; forty is ormotsi, “two-twenties”; sixty is samotsi, “three-twenties”; eighty is otkhmotsi, “four-twenties”. Fifty is ormotsdaati — two twenties and a ten.

So when a price sounds much longer than the number deserves, that is why. Nobody expects you to follow it. Everybody will happily write the number down, and most people will show you a phone screen before you ask.

The Russian question

Handle this one deliberately.

Russian is widely understood by Georgians over about forty-five, because they were schooled in it. Younger Georgians have generally learned English instead, and in tourism most people have some of both. So starting a conversation in Russian will usually be understood.

It is not neutral. Russian troops are stationed in Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region — around a fifth of this country’s territory — and 2008 is inside everybody’s memory here, including in this valley. Nobody will be rude to you about it. But it lands differently from the way it lands in a guidebook.

The correct move is simple: open in Georgian, continue in English, and let the other person offer Russian if they want to. They frequently will, and then it is fine, because they chose it.

What is actually bilingual in Telavi

Menus in the centre of town are usually Georgian and English, sometimes with photographs. Menus away from the centre are Georgian only. The market is Georgian only. The minibus drivers understand the town names and not much else, which is all you need. Museum labelling at Batonis Tsikhe is bilingual; the small churches have nothing at all.

Almost every road sign in the country is Georgian and Latin script both, which is one of the few genuinely easy things about driving here.

Two names to get right

The country is საქართველო — Sakartvelo. “Georgia” is what other people call it, and it is tolerated the way any exonym is. Nobody here uses it about themselves.

And the alphabet has no capital letters, so when you see a Georgian sign written all in what looks like block capitals, that is a display font. There is no such thing as shouting in Georgian type, which is one of the several small advantages this language has over ours.

Where to practise

The market, before ten, buying cheese from somebody who does not speak English either. Nobody will correct you and everybody will be visibly pleased.

We speak English, Georgian and Russian in this house, and we will happily drill you on the twelve words over breakfast if you want, which several guests have and one of whom got as far as making a toast in Georgian at a cellar in Ruispiri. It was not grammatical. It was the best thing that happened that week to anyone at the table.