This video went viral in September 2014, bringing millions of people worldwide their first taste of Georgian language and culture.
Four young women walk down a country road in Georgia singing a traditional folk song. Note the trilled /r/ and ejective consonants /p' t' k' q' t͡ʃ ʼ t͡sʼ/, clearly audible around the 1:25 mark. As a point of interest, in this video these women are singing in a more regional variant of the language that many native Georgians found difficult to understand.
This map illustrates the incredible ethno-linguistic diversity found in the Caucasus. Alongside English and Russian, five separate language families are represented.
These languages that compete with the various dialects of Georgian are given little thought in official educational decisions. The government prefers that Georgians be bilingual in Georgian and Russian or English, as opposed to a minority language and Georgian. In the contested territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, non-Georgian languages tend to be more common.
Here is the most commonly used script for the Georgian alphabet, called Mkhedruli. It dates from the 10th century and has also been adapted to serve as the alphabet for some of the minority languages spoken in the region.
Many signs are bilingual in Georgian and English, or even Georgian transliterated into the Latin script -
- but older signs remain in Russian rather than English, and road signs in the countryside are often only in Georgian. This sign reads "Repair" in Georgian and Russian, while the previous sign's proximity to the capital explains its bilingualism.