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What’s with this “Wren” thing?
The oldest extant version of the fable
we
are presenting here appeared in 1913 in the first volume of a two-volume anthology
of Low
Saxon folktales (Plattdeutsche
Volksmärchen “Low German Folktales”)
collected by Wilhelm Wisser (1843–1935). Read
more ...
Kartuli Ena
Georgian
Sameba
Church at Gergeti, Kazbegi—Georgia, a land of rugged beauty, ancient Christian traditions, exquisit cuisine,
breathtaking dances, flourishing arts, and boundless cultural diversity
Language information:
Georgian is the primary language of most citizens of Georgia, a former Soviet
Republic
in the Caucasus. It dominates minority languages in that country and is used
as a secondary language by speakers of minority languages (especially Svan,
Megrelian and Laz), most of which, like Georgian itself, are genealogically
Kartvelian and geographically Southern Caucasian.
The number of Georgian speakers
is approximately 4 million in Georgia and approximately 3.5 million in other
countries,
especially
in
Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Canada and the USA.
Most closely related to
Georgian, if it is not a dialect of it, is Gruzinic, also known as Judeo-Georgian,
which is specific to Jewish Georgians and is used mostly in Georgia, Israel,
Russia, Belgium, Canada and the USA.
Some
well-known Georgians: · George
Balanchine (Georgi
Melitonovich Balanchivadze)
· Alexander
Borodin
· Peter the Iberian (Petre Iberi)
· Eduard Shevardnadze
· Joseph Stalin (Ioseb Jughashvili)
Like
all Southern Caucasian language varieties, Georgian has a complex morphological
system typified by agglutination (including the use of infixes, as opposed
to more usual prefixes and suffixes).
Two prominent phonological features shared
with most other Southern Caucasian languages (also with most languages of the
North American Pacific Northwest) are extreme consonant clusters and ejective
(or glottalic egressive) consonants (pronounced with simultaneous closure of
the glottis). Like in the American Pacific Northwest, the use of ejective consonants
is an areal feature rather than a purely genealogical one, since it has spread
to unrelated languages.
Georgian has its
own script, which is partly derived from Greek and is nowadays used for some
minority languages of Georgia as well. Originally, there were two other
scripts, but the Mkhedruli script is now the only one used for ordinary purposes.
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