Since 2009, Georgian television no longer uses dubbed dialogue. Instead, following the example of European countries like the Netherlands or Sweden, English programs use subtitles or no translation at all. With this change, the government hopes to greatly improve the English listening comprehension of its citizens.
This is a live tweet widget showing a selection of tweets from the country of Georgia in the Georgian language. As one can see, the Georgian language has a real presence on Twitter - businesses use it to advertise to Georgian consumers, news organizations broadcast in Georgian, and ordinary people share their lives with the world. And yet, note the time stamps.
This, by comparison, is a collection of all tweets in English that were sent from within the country of Georgia. In general, far more tweets from Georgia appear in English than Georgian.
Here, the mayor of Tbilisi speaks about a conference with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, discussing the improvements in store for the city of Tbilisi in terms of green energy and public transit. His pronunciation and word stress when speaking English are quite different than that of either an English or a Russian native speaker.
Click here for another sample of English spoken in Georgia.
The above link goes to the International Dialects of English Archive, where a young man reads a scripted text aloud and makes other unscripted comments. The reader can be heard stumbling over less-common words like ether or comma. He also often uses /w/ in place of /v/ and /i/ in place of /ɪ/.
Georgian is a syllable-timed language, while Russian and English are stress-timed languages. This means that a Georgian native speaker will tend to give each English syllable equal length, leading some people to call the speech "choppy." Note, too, the devoicing of some final consonants in both recordings, where English native speakers tend to retain voicing. The mayor and other public figures have been criticized by their own citizens in the past for giving speeches in this variety of English.
Click here for another sample of English spoken in Georgia.
The above link goes to the International Dialects of English Archive, where a young man reads a scripted text aloud and makes other unscripted comments. The reader can be heard stumbling over less-common words like ether or comma. He also often uses /w/ in place of /v/ and /i/ in place of /ɪ/.
Georgian is a syllable-timed language, while Russian and English are stress-timed languages. This means that a Georgian native speaker will tend to give each English syllable equal length, leading some people to call the speech "choppy." Note, too, the devoicing of some final consonants in both recordings, where English native speakers tend to retain voicing. The mayor and other public figures have been criticized by their own citizens in the past for giving speeches in this variety of English.