One’s mom tongue is the best consolation blanket, an intimacy like no different, during which we really feel most comfortable and safe alongside others who communicate and assume in our distinctive and shared code. Language can also be a construction during which the programs devised to organise a given actuality are mirrored.
Extra poetically put, each language is a house, in whose nooks and crannies extraordinary and stunning issues may be discovered. It may be thought-about a complete universe – within the sense of tolerating by means of epochs and generations whereas concurrently increasing its boundaries advert infinitum. That is what the Georgian phrase sopeli, that means each ‘village’ and ‘world’, refers to. It’s what Wittgenstein meant when he wrote that the boundaries of 1’s language are additionally these of 1’s world.
Incomparably Kartvelian
It was music that initially led me to Georgian tradition. It was music that made me cease in the midst of Kraków’s Primary Sq. one August afternoon within the late Nineteen Nineties. Two lads, one quick with black, curly hair and eyebrows like Polish actor Włodzimierz Press, the opposite tall and bald, used their voices to supply a rare and stirring concord. I stood there, dazed, unable to acknowledge something in that polyphony from the sound of phrases I had heard earlier than.
It was solely later that I realised how proper I had been, unable to position the Georgian language inside any cultural or linguistic group I knew. The reason being easy: no such group exists. Georgian and its extra archaic variants – all of the Kartvelian languages (from Kartveli, as Georgians check with themselves) – represent a separate linguistic group. Maybe someday Poland and different nations will handle to free Georgia and Georgians from this toponymic colonialism and communicate of the Kartvelians and Kartvelia – simply as Polish poet Julian Tuwim did when, with the assistance of a Georgian buddy, he translated the prologue to Shota Rustaveli’s twelfth century epic The Knight within the Panther’s Pores and skin.
Kartvelian languages, which along with ‘Georgian’ embody the languages of Svan, Mingrelian and Laz, are unrelated to some other language, residing or extinct. By the use of comparability, the Indo-European household, which additionally contains fifteen Slavic languages, contains a complete of 450 languages spoken by 3.5 billion individuals. Georgians, due to this fact, have each proper to really feel singular of their id, formed by a uniqueness that’s matched solely by their isolation.
To and from Georgia
Because it turned out, the artists I had heard in Kraków had been cousins from Tbilisi (we’ll come again to how ‘it turned out’ later). They earned a residing by enjoying in golf equipment, and on that fateful day, had determined to earn a bit further by busking on the road I used to be strolling down. I had been ruminating on my nineteen-year-old zest for all times and the truth that I’d misplaced my place as an apprentice in a Kraków stained-glass workshop. The workshop was going bust, and together with it, my first ever dream of mixing incomes a residing with practising artwork. They invited me to a gig. The tall one checked out me intently. He was ensuring I’d come.
Georgia had simply emerged from three brutal, Russian-backed civil wars. The nation was slowly recovering from its collapse – devastated by battle, grappling with an financial disaster and fixed energy outages, but on the identical time brimming with new vitality and eagerly open to the world. Georgians had freed themselves from Soviet hegemony and had been wanting outwards in direction of Europe, within the hope of a greater future. Borders had been opening; one may enter Poland merely with a a call for participation. These musicians had been among the many first Georgian migrants to reach seeking a greater life.
My future associate – one of many musicians – didn’t wish to return. He stored saying that life there was too tough, that the fact can be an excessive amount of for us. I had my approach ultimately. I wished to immerse myself on this extraordinary language and music, to decode the meanings, to know the ideas that ruled them. I sought solutions in academia however discovered a complete void. In Poland, each linguistic anthropology and musicology are nonetheless ready to find and research the Kartvelian area, which was jealously guarded first by Russian after which by Soviet science and ideological doctrines, isolating Georgia from the remainder of the world and lowering its profound tradition to the extent of an ethnographic curiosity.
In literature, the state of affairs was even worse; very like within the case of the Executed Renaissance in Ukraine, lots of Georgia’s most excellent writers fell sufferer to Stalinist purges. Their names and works, consigned to a rapidly dug pit, needed to wait practically a century to be rediscovered by modern readers, each in Georgia and overseas.
Delving into Georgian
As I delved into the Georgian language and tradition, I got here throughout a wealth of breathtaking discoveries. One after the other, phrases and ideas shed their masks and veils, revealing their unknown aspects and main me deep into the center of the language, to the locations of their delivery, to the archaic sources and roots of the Georgian language. As soon as I stepped outdoors my linguistic consolation zone, I turned more and more conscious of the fascinating connection between language and the way in which we understand the world – a phenomenon described by the American anthropologist and linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf. His title is related to linguistic relativity, colloquially generally known as the ‘Sapir-Whorf speculation’, which posits that human thought relies on the language used. In keeping with this idea, it’s language that shapes our ideas, and its attribute buildings function a template for our minds: we at all times assume ‘inside’ a particular language.
The speculation suggests language influences our notion and expertise – it shapes what we see, as we undertaking the precise traits of the language we communicate onto the skin world. While studying the grammar and etymology of the Georgian language, and on the identical time gaining a deep understanding of the cultural distinctiveness of its audio system, I’ve had many alternatives to see this idea in motion. As a literary translator and somebody who consistently switches between languages and the worlds created inside them, this angle is near my coronary heart. The method of analysing and deconstructing a supply textual content and reconstructing it within the goal language at all times includes the query of how faithfully these patterns are reproduced and all the implications this entails on the opposite facet of a given language.
One of many difficulties in describing these phenomena lies, amongst different issues, within the lack of specialist literature on the Georgian language. Little or no, if something, has been written in Poland concerning the grammar of the Kartvelian languages, which is why I draw on Latin or English phrases and, or, when mandatory, coin my very own. The time will come for a correct research on this topic. Within the meantime, allow us to study a set of chosen phenomena, rarities and curiosities from the recesses of the Georgian language and soul.
After I moved to Tbilisi twenty-five years in the past, I used to be swimming in opposition to the tide that was driving hundreds of Georgians into exile. At the moment, round 27,000 individuals in Poland communicate Georgian, making it the third-largest group of overseas nationals employed by Polish firms.
On bread and translation
I realise this each time I land at Okęcie and name a taxi. The app’s chat function usually shows these acquainted, rounded letters of the Mkhedruli alphabet, with curls like vine tendrils. My telephone doesn’t translate Georgian, so I’ve added its alphabet to my keyboard choices. I’m knowledgeable ‘Merab might be with you shortly’. Or Zura, Giorgi or Vakhtang. We begin chatting and so they ask the place I’m from. No, I’m not Georgian, however I dwell in Tbilisi. The taxi drivers invariably react with amazement; few foreigners in Georgia handle to talk Georgian nicely sufficient to even purchase bread at a bakery.
It’s Georgian bakeries which have develop into one of the crucial noticeable indicators of the Kartvelian presence in Poland. We have now come to like puri, a reputation that has its roots within the Sanskrit phrase for bread. Anybody who has been to Georgia is aware of that you’d be laborious pressed to search out one thing extra heavenly in look, style and aroma than puri baked in a standard wood-fired oven. Considered one of Tbilisi’s greatest bakeries is positioned subsequent to Tatar Sq., reverse the previous inns, within the basement of the Tiflis Theological Seminary – the exact same one from which a younger Stalin was expelled for failing to take a seat his exams.
In different international locations, puri isn’t baked with Georgian flour. It appears to end up the identical however not displays the lightness and acrobatic grace with which the boys in Tatar Sq. dive deep into the dough, urgent it in opposition to the recent stomach of the oven. Literary translation can also be a bit like bread baked in another person’s oven; it’s inconceivable to convey one thing that exists completely in a given language, and Georgian, as you’ve already appropriately guessed, consists primarily of idiosyncrasies. Its grammar has nothing in widespread with the logical matrix of some other language in our stunning and linguistically numerous world.
Georgian idiosyncrasies
Georgian is notable for its lack of grammatical gender and really complicated verb system, which, versus conventional classes, is predicated on eleven varieties generally known as ‘screeves’, indicating each tense, conjugation and topic, that are cut up into three ‘sequence’.
This verb development may be known as a ‘field’ construction: a single verb can comprise as much as 4 individuals or issues without delay, as pronouns take the type of infixes. For instance, the sentence ‘I’m singing this for him’ may be expressed in Georgian with a single phrase: vmgheri. This technique ends in exceptional conciseness and, consequently, communicative effectivity. A single phrase spoken shortly replaces a complete sentence. The identical applies to the rule for forming reported speech – to point another person’s phrases, one merely provides the letter ‘o’ on the finish of the verb. Fast, discreet, and, most significantly, efficient.
Repeating what another person has stated within the Georgian language pertains to my favorite linguistic and cultural oddity: specifically a tense I name the ‘gossip tense’. Georgians take pleasure in gossiping, and so they rightly take into account it as a approach of strengthening social bonds; so why wouldn’t they create a separate grammatical class for it? The title of this tense, turmeobiti, derives from turme, that means ‘it seems that’, and signifies a previous state in relation to the current – or in different phrases, one thing occurred that we’re solely simply discovering out about now. However shush! Hold that to your self! ‘It seems’ the language actually is filled with secrets and techniques. The change in verb kind is a humble tribute to useful data and the forging of a particular understanding between these within the know.
Equally, Georgian grammar rewards individuals and issues which have efficiently accomplished a given motion. A courageous topic previously excellent tense has a particular case kind bestowed upon them, generally known as the ‘ergative’. If an individual has achieved one thing, this ought to be acknowledged ultimately, and on this case, the individual receives a proud suffix that glimmers on the finish of the phrase like a badge on the chest of a star worker.
The absence of grammatical gender, one of many defining options of the Georgian language, ends in follow in a state of blissful equality – a grammatical dream come true for non-binary individuals. Because of this phenomenon, I’ve on multiple event discovered myself hounding my authors (who had been, fortunately, all alive and nicely) with telephone calls, asking whom they had been referring to, because the grammar of the Polish language brutally and mercilessly demanded clarification. Generally, Georgian authors mess around with this conference and, by concealing the characters’ gender id, construct suspense – ultimately it seems (there’s that ‘it seems’ once more) that nobody was who we initially thought they had been.
Expressive and energetic, Kartvelians love to invest and interact in heated arguments on any subject. The condensed types of the language permit for fast change of data and preserve a dizzying tempo of debate. The impression of verbal machine-gun fireplace is intensified by the phonetics – anybody who has heard Kartvelians in a verbal duel will nod in settlement. That is because of the presence of attribute ‘explosive’ sounds within the language, so-called ‘ejective’ consonants, which, particularly when uttered in a vehement tone, appear to tear open the speaker’s larynx and the listener’s ears like a beatbox from damaged audio system.
I first skilled the ability of ejectives when, twenty-five years in the past, two aggressive younger males accosted my Georgian buddy on a bridge in Kraków. In response, he graphically listed in his personal language what he would do to them and their moms in the event that they didn’t again off. Georgian non-dictionary expressions are characterised by an distinctive saturation of explosive phonemes – you didn’t want to know the language to listen to the intent. The aggressors’ expressions darkened as they listened, and eventually, with a muttered grunt, they left the battlefield.
Like each sound, ejectives additionally possess word-forming energy, but an untrained ear and speech equipment can’t understand or specific the variations between the nuances of main and minor eruptions within the larynx. Again when Georgian was nonetheless a darkish forest to me, inhabited by monsters of inflection, I made the error of exchanging one such sound for an additional as an alternative of providing greetings to a sure household, and I managed to say that I’d topic them to brutal sexual violence. A lesson for all times: ejectives can develop into invectives and so they should be dealt with with care.
The rabbit gap of etymology
At this level, I wish to applaud anybody who has bravely navigated their approach by means of the language’s complicated labyrinth of grammar and phonetics – you’re rewarded with the attractive ergative case, and I invite probably the most persistent chosen ones for a fast and essentially cursory journey down the rabbit gap of etymology.
Let’s begin at the start – or, because the Georgians would say, from the top. Within the Kartvelian languages, tavi means ‘head’ but additionally ‘starting’, ‘supply’ and ‘summit’. The identical phrase provides rise to the time period for an individual enjoying a number one position, standing on the high of the hierarchy: tavmjdomare, actually translated as ‘sitting on the head of the desk’, which in colloquial language means ‘chairman’. From the identical root comes mtavari, that means ‘principal’, ‘most essential,’ ‘main’, and tavadi, that means a ‘individual of excessive delivery’. Moreover, utavo, that means ‘an individual with out a head’, is solely a idiot, and t’vishi means ‘one’s personal’, ‘belonging to a given individual’ or, actually. ‘from the top’.
From this root, the Kartvelians coined one of the crucial essential ideas – tavisupleba, or freedom, which accurately means ‘one’s personal regulation’ or ‘the regulation of the top’. However ufleba, that means ‘regulation’, derives from the phrase ufali, which implies ‘god’, so freedom actually means ‘being one’s personal god’, one’s personal sovereign. Freedom, in Kartvelian, is the best to self-determination, for which they consistently should battle with every successive empire. As a result of there has at all times been an empire: Achaemenid and Safavid Persia, Byzantium, the Mongols, the Arabs, Ottoman Turkey, and, for the final two centuries, Russia.
The language of resistance
I usually ask myself, and the Kartvelians, how it’s that their language and tradition have endured, somewhat than being swallowed up by the maelstrom of successive powers which have occupied this strip of land between the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea. Maybe the reply lies exactly within the energy of cultural codes, interpersonal bonds and id embedded within the language. Nonetheless, it additionally took immense willpower and braveness to withstand the unfavourable destiny that positioned the audio system of this language and their nation in a spot the place civilizations and religions have clashed since time immemorial, the place empires rise and fall. Destiny – or bedi.
A fortunate individual is one who has success. A bednieri is a cheerful individual, actually ‘possessor of excellent fortune,’ whereas one who has no luck is an ubeduri – an individual experiencing misfortune, or actually ‘lack of fortune.’ In fact, unhealthy fortune should be fought, say the Kartvelians. The phrase for braveness and boldness, gambedaoba, means nothing greater than ‘readiness to alter destiny,’ the need to beat destiny.
As I write these phrases, over 100 brave Georgian residents are serving lengthy political sentences for resisting the federal government that’s tearing the nation from its European orbit and brutally pushing it again into the Russian sphere of affect – a spot from which the Kartvelians are determined to flee. Mass public protests have been ongoing for a yr, ever for the reason that authorities introduced the suspension of EU accession talks. Protest rallies collect every day on Rustaveli Avenue, Tbilisi’s foremost road, in Batumi and different Georgian cities, regardless of the federal government’s bans and draconian penalties for taking part. It was throughout these protests that police arrested journalist and impartial media founder Mzia Amaglobeli, actor Andro Chichinadze and poet Zviad Ratiani, who, together with different prisoners of conscience, have been imprisoned for a few years.
Regardless of this, the protests proceed. The Kartvelians, in accordance with the code written of their language, are preventing in opposition to the perfidious destiny that has positioned them within the neighborhood of Russia, in opposition to the evil destiny that has condemned this historical and profound tradition to exist as a colony of probably the most primitive of empires.
The following time you stroll right into a Georgian bakery to purchase bread, want them victory as you step by means of the doorway. The Georgian greeting, gamarjoba, actually means ‘could you win’.
