The Georgian Alphabet: 33 Letters and How to Read Them

The Georgian alphabet used today, called Mkhedruli, has 33 letters: 5 vowels and 28 consonants. It has no upper and lower case, and each letter stands for one sound, so once you know the 33 shapes you can read any Georgian word aloud. The hard part is not the reading but the sounds: Georgian has a set of “sharp” consonants that English doesn’t have, and it stacks consonants together in clusters like გვ (gv) at the start of words.

This guide uses the letters, names and sounds from our free Georgian alphabet chart, and every practice word comes from our list of the 1,550 most common Georgian words, with its rank on that list.

#What kind of script is Georgian?

Georgian is a true alphabet: vowels and consonants are written as equal letters, one after another, left to right, like English. It is not related to the Latin, Greek or Cyrillic alphabets in shape. Our alphabet data describes the letters as “rounded and unrelated to any other script in use”, and the Georgian language itself is not related to its neighbors either.

Three things make it easier than it looks:

• One letter, one sound. Georgian spelling is phonetic. A letter is said the same way in every word, and there are no silent letters.
• No capital letters. Every letter has one form. A name, the first word of a sentence and an ordinary noun all look the same.
• No accent marks or vowel signs. What you see is what you say.

What takes practice is the shape. Mkhedruli letters are all curves and loops, and several differ only in a small hook or in whether a stroke goes above or below the line. Learn them in small groups and read real words early.

#Mtavruli and the three Georgian scripts

Georgian has been written in three scripts over its history. They are three forms of the same alphabet with the same letters in the same order, not three different alphabets:

Asomtavruli is the oldest, and the earliest surviving Georgian inscriptions, from the 5th century, are written in it. Nuskhuri developed from it as a faster writing hand for manuscripts. Mkhedruli began as the script of royal and secular documents and is now the one every Georgian reads and writes. In 2016 UNESCO added the “living culture of three writing systems of the Georgian alphabet” to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Like the Armenian alphabet, Georgian keeps a traditional letter order that largely follows Greek: ა (an), ბ (ban), გ (gan), დ (don), ე (en) run parallel to alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon. If you have read our Greek alphabet guide, the start of the Georgian order will feel familiar even though no shape is shared.

A few old letters were dropped from the modern alphabet in the late 19th century because they no longer matched sounds in the language. Our chart, like every modern Georgian textbook, lists the 33 in use.

#Georgian vowels

Georgian has five vowels, each with one clear sound. There are no long and short pairs and no reduced vowels, so a vowel sounds the same whether it is stressed or not.

The letter names are easy to remember: most are the sound plus a short ending, as in an, ban, gan.

#Georgian consonants and the sharp letters

Fifteen of the 28 consonants fall into five sets of three. In each set there is a voiced sound, a sound with a puff of air (aspirated) and a sharp sound with no puff of air (ejective). One more sharp letter, ყ, stands alone.

The other 12 consonants are close to English sounds, with two exceptions marked below:

#What “sharp” means

The six sharp letters, კ, პ, ტ, წ, ჭ and ყ, are what linguists call ejectives. You close your throat, build up a little pressure and release the consonant with a clean pop, with no breath after it. Their partners, ქ, ფ, თ, ც and ჩ, are said with a clear puff of air, like the k, p and t at the start of English “kin”, “pin” and “tin”.

A useful first approximation for English speakers: the k in “skin” has no puff of air, so it is closer to the sharp კ than the k in “kin” is. It isn’t the full ejective sound, but it gets you out of the habit of breathing after every k. ყ is made further back, in the throat, and has no aspirated partner in the modern alphabet.

The difference changes meaning. On our common words list, კარი (door, #733) starts with the sharp k, and ქარი (wind, #1,084) starts with the aspirated one. Say both to a Georgian speaker and they will hear two different words.

#Telling the sharp letters apart by name

The sharp (ejective) letters have almost the same names as their partners with a puff of air: კ is k’an and ქ is kan, პ is p’ar and ფ is par. Our chart writes the apostrophe the way Georgian textbooks do (they spell the full names k’ani and p’ari), and it marks ტ t’ar, წ c’il and ჭ ch’ar the same way. The apostrophe is the sharp sound.

#Consonant clusters

Georgian is famous for strings of consonants with no vowel between them. English has clusters too (“strengths” has three consonants in a row at the end); Georgian simply has more of them, and at the start of words. The rule for reading is simple: say every letter, in order, without adding a vowel.

The most common cluster you’ll meet is გვ (gv). At the start of a verb it usually means “us” or “we”, so it appears in many everyday words:

Other clusters are just as common: წყ in წყალი (water, #542), თქ in თქვენ (you, #42), ცხ in ცხრა (nine, #1,318), სხ in სხვა (other, #78). A word often quoted to show how far this goes is გვფრცქვნი (gvprtskvni, “you peel us”), with eight consonants before the first vowel. You won’t need it, but after it every other cluster feels short.

#Read your first Georgian words

Each of these is on our most common Georgian words list. Start with the ones at the top: they use only a few letters and no clusters.

Note the first two: in Georgian მამა (mama) means father and დედა (deda) means mother, the opposite of what an English speaker expects. Then read გამარჯობა letter by letter: ga, ma, r, jo, ba. Five letters you already know from the words above, plus რ and ჯ.

#A learning plan for the Georgian alphabet

The full chart is at /tools/alphabet/georgian. Once you can read, move on to vocabulary: the 1,550 most common Georgian words, each with its English meaning. When a few hundred of them are familiar, the Georgian vocabulary test estimates how many of the list’s words you know.

#Practice reading and speaking with native speakers

A chart can show you that კ and ქ are different letters. Only a listener can tell you whether you are saying them differently. On LangX, Georgian is one of the 182 languages you can pick, and matching runs both ways: you see people who speak Georgian and are learning a language you speak. They can hold any of your messages to correct your spelling, corrections are unlimited on every plan, and voice messages let them hear your sharp letters and clusters. LangX has voice messages, not live calls. The free plan includes 5 new conversations a day and unlimited replies. Georgian is a smaller language than Spanish or French, so expect a smaller pool of partners and be patient in finding one.

9:41

Lucía M. Online

Today

Hold any message to correct it — corrections are the most useful thing you can send.

¿Cómo fue tu fin de semana? Cuéntame en inglés si quieres. How was your weekend? Tell me in English if you like. 09:12

Fui a la playa con mi hermana. Hacía mucho calor y yo no llevé agua. 09:14 · Read

Correction from Lucía Hacía mucho calor y yo no llevé agua. Hacía mucho calor y no llevé agua. The «yo» isn't wrong, it just sounds emphatic — like you specifically forgot. 09:15

Message in Spanish…

You can get the app here, or read how to do a language exchange first.

#More alphabet guides

Georgia’s neighbor has its own unique script too: the Armenian alphabet, created in the 5th century for the Armenian language, looks like no other script either, but it has capital and small letters, and 38 letters plus a ligature. Compare the two charts at /tools/alphabet/georgian and /tools/alphabet/armenian. For other scripts, see the Greek alphabet, the Russian alphabet, the Ukrainian alphabet, the Korean alphabet and the abugidas in our Hindi, Bengali and Malayalam guides. Every chart is on the alphabet tools page.

#FAQ

#How many letters are in the Georgian alphabet?

The modern Georgian alphabet, Mkhedruli, has 33 letters: 5 vowels and 28 consonants. A few older letters were dropped in the late 19th century and appear only in historical texts.

#Does Georgian have capital letters?

Not in ordinary writing. Sentences and names start with the same letters as any other word. There is an all-caps form, Mtavruli, used for titles, headings and signs, but never to capitalize the first letter of a sentence.

#What are the three Georgian scripts?

Asomtavruli (the oldest, from the 5th century), Nuskhuri (from the 9th century, used in church writing) and Mkhedruli (from the 10th century, the script used for everything today). They are forms of the same alphabet.

#What are ejective consonants in Georgian?

The six sharp letters კ, პ, ტ, წ, ჭ and ყ. They are said with the throat closed and released with a pop, with no puff of air. They contrast with aspirated letters, as in კარი (door) and ქარი (wind).

#Is Georgian hard to read?

Reading is easier than it looks, because each letter has exactly one sound and there are no capitals, accents or silent letters. The hard parts are telling the rounded shapes apart and pronouncing the sharp consonants and clusters.