Enough Georgian for three days

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 twelve words and the alphabet in an afternoon. Because almost nobody bothers, both go further here than they would almost anywhere else.

What the language actually is

Georgian is not related to anything you know. It is not Indo-European, Slavic, or Turkic. It belongs to the Kartvelian family alongside three small languages spoken only in Georgia. There is no grammatical gender, no articles, no capital letters, and a set of verb forms you will not need this week.

The modern script is Mkhedruli. It has 33 letters. Two older scripts, Mrgvlovani and Nuskhuri, remain in liturgical use. The simultaneous use of all three is why UNESCO added “the living culture of three writing systems of the Georgian alphabet” to its intangible heritage list in 2016.

The consonant clusters are genuinely difficult. The standard example is გვფრცქვნის — eight consonants before a vowel, meaning 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. Learn the 33 shapes and you can read a sign aloud without understanding a word of it. This is 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 difficult letters 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. There are pairs like თ/ტ and ქ/კ where one is breathy and one is sharp. 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 “victory to you”
გმადლობთ	GMAD-lobt	Thank you (polite). მადლობა, madloba, is the everyday version
ჰო / კი	ho / ki	Yes, in ordinary speech. დიახ, diakh, is formal
არა	A-ra	No
ბოდიში	BO-di-shi	Sorry, and 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

If you only learn three, learn gamarjoba, madloba, and gemrielia, in that order.

The one word that changes a menu

სამარხვო — samarkhvo — means Lenten, or fasting food. Georgian Orthodox fasting excludes all animal products. In practice, samarkhvo means vegan, and every kitchen here 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 pickles, cooked properly rather than assembled by subtraction. It is a far better question than asking for vegetarian food, and it is why 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.

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.

Georgians over forty-five usually understand Russian because they were schooled in it. Younger Georgians generally learn English instead. In tourism, people often have some of both. If you start a conversation in Russian, you will usually be understood.

It is not neutral. Russian troops occupy Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region — about a fifth of the country. The 2008 war 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. Minibus drivers understand town names and little else, which is all you need. Museum labels at Batonis Tsikhe are bilingual. The small churches have nothing at all.

Almost every road sign in the country uses both Georgian and Latin scripts, 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.

The alphabet has no capital letters. When a Georgian sign is written in what looks like block capitals, it is just a display font. There is no such thing as shouting in Georgian type.

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.

Ira, who hosts the house, speaks English, Georgian and Russian, and you are welcome to try the twelve words over breakfast.