& SO IT BEGINS (TONGUE-TRIED)

 <<Hi. I was wondering if you might be able to help me?>>

The young lady looks up from her computer screen, switches her face from focused worker-bee to beaming, hospitality smile & responds in an English as crisp & formally welcoming as her sharply-ironed, white-blouse uniform.

<<We will be happy to help you with anything that we can, sir.>>

The lady at the other computer terminal nods in agreement. 
I briefly drift off into the Arthurian fantasy of chivalric derring-do, mediaeval

horseplay & questing knights in shining armour (for further reference see the movie A Knight’s Tale) that I am prone to float off into whenever someone calls me sir, before dragging my wayward brain lurching and juddering back to the point at hand.

<<I’m looking for a Georgian tutor & was wondering

 if you might have any recommendations?>>

<<You want to….?>> the slightest furrowing of brow <<learn Georgian?>>

There ensues a rapid-rattle co-worker crossfire in the aforementioned language, laying bare my abject ignorance with its indecipherability. The wall of sound & fury signifying (at least to me) nothing, finally rests in silence.

By-now-thoroughly furrowed brows are ratcheted back into megawatt smile mode.

<<I am very sorry, but we do not know of such a thing, sir.
  We very much hope you find it. Good Luck!>>

I stumble out into the darkness.

Or at least that would have been the metaphorically appropriate thing to have done. Actually, it’s a scorching mid-afternoon in what I’m told is an unseasonably hot mid-September in the Caucasus. So, in the clunkingly non-metaphorical world, I wander out into the blazing light of a Tbilisi courtyard; the baking sun driving the last moisture out of row upon row of washing hanging from row upon row of ornate wooden balconies & driving the little sense left out of one search-weary, dehydration-addled brain (that of your humble & linguistically-humbled narrator, in case that wasn’t clear).

Perhaps the weather’s pathetic fallacy was appropriate on second thoughts, as the other thing that leapt startling to my attention in this courtyard was a cornucopia of signs offering wares unknown in a script as yet half-learned. A veritable revelation squared of information hiding in plain sight, too blinding bright for these tired eyes to see clear. With my tentative book-learning I could pick out the odd syllable; mouth-gymnastic, consonant-heavy barrages like mtsv & tskh, but the meaning of the whole eluded me like a fugitive grail.

So what was this language the ken of which I sought. Well…depends on who you ask really. To outsiders, it is known (if known at all) as Georgian, the language of the people of Georgia. No, not that one, the other…no, the country not the state. Which… where… what did you say? N'no, not the Atlanta one...country not the state...totally different continent. Which continent? Well, again that really depends on who you ask. A little bit Europe, a little bit Asia. Nestled in the Caucasus mountains (of Caucasian fame) between the [Sirius] Black and [Prince] Caspian Seas, it lies on an ancient Silk Road crossroads where the armies of the Greek, Persian, Roman, Byzantine, Mongol, Arabic, Timurid, Ottoman, Safavid & Russian Empires have traditionally gathered together to give each other a good, old-fashioned shit-kicking.

St. Nino

To those on the inside, it is Kartuli (ქართული) the ancient language of the modern republic of Sakartvelo (საქართველო). The language of the second ever Christian nation; the Kingdom of Iberia (no, not the Portugal & Spain one, we’re still in the Caucasus Mountains here), converted by Saint Nino (წმინდა ნინო) in the 320s A.D. (pipped to the post by a mere 20 years or so by those buggars next door, the Armenians). Homeland of the great King David the Builder & the truly badass Queen Tamar (of whom no doubt I will devote more scribblings in future blog posts), of quite probably the world’s oldest winemaking tradition, of Katie Melua (of The Closest Thing To Crazy fame) & (perhaps somewhat less auspiciously, but no less significantly) of one Joseph Stalin.

So how much of a pushover/headwrecker is this language going to be to learn? Well...it has no relatives in any of the Indo-European languages (like English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Farsi, Sanskrit, Armenian &c.) so the majority of the vocabulary is completely unfamiliar. Having said that, the region's history as a cultural crossroads has given Georgian a few familiar borrowings from hither & thither, such as pomidori (პომიდორი), for tomato from the Italian & kart’opili (კარტოფილი) for potato (thanks Germans) so there are a few linguistically-familiar vines from which to swing into the jungle darkness. It’s not too much of a stretch to make out that eklesia (ეკლესია) means church (step forward the Greeks, who used it, before Christ got involved, to refer to a place where people [& possibly Avengers] assembled) & a fairly cursory knowledge of oriental cultures will help you to see how bazari (ბაზარი) means market (from those scamps the Persians) or how ch“ai (ჩაი) means tea (ultimately from the Mandarin, having taken a long old trek down the Silk Road)

It also has its own script to master (that curly stuff you’ve been seeing in brackets is not, as it might first appear, Elvish). Fortunately for the ease of my romanised brain, it’s not syllabic like Thai or logosyllabic like Chinese, but alphabetic, so the learning of it is not as daunting as it might first appear.  მ is always an m, an ა is always an a, so მამა is mama (which is a Georgian word, though not necessarily the one you'd expect, as you'll see in a moment).

What's more, the spelling is much more phonetically consistent than the learner“s nightmare that is English (English-speakers imagine if you will the migraine induced in learners when they discover that the ou in though, through & enough is pronounced completely differently in each one [& that pronounced is pronounced differently again].  In fact, those respective ou noises <<oh, ooh, ugh, ow!>> might just be the exasperated string of sounds students of English make trying to fathom out this vocalic-madness).

There are also a few somewhat counter-intuitive words for English-speakers to wrap their noggins around.  Chief of which the fact that mama (მამა) means dad and deda (დედა) means mam/mum/mom (delete according to your regional preference).

So will I find a teacher to help me come to grips with this strange Georgian tongue? Will I ever penetrate the enigma-cloaked mysteries of those unusual signs? Will they lead me to some of the fruits of that millennia-old winemaking knowledge? Why was this here Queen Tamar such a badass anyhow? How many venerable cultures have I managed to offend in this blog post? If unravelling these and other histories & mysteries seems like your cup of ჩაი, watch this space.