Lesson 1: Basic Conjugation

Having picked up a number of basic phrases on the first trip to Georgia or from a Georgian friend outside of Georgia and after starting to become familiar with the Georgian alphabet, one might be interested to proceed with learning Georgian in a systematic way. At this stage it would be essential to acquire some basic understanding of how to use the Georgian verbs. Especially in Georgian, but essentially in most languages, learning the basics of the verb systems is often the most challenging part.

It is easy to get confused, overwhelmed and frustrated when looking at the many verb tables, chapters, rules (and exceptions to them!) etc. – just look at the page on the Georgian Verb here and the pages linked from there. Or better, don't! Take it one step at the time, learning the rules one by one. This is what these posts are about. I am planning to reduce the complexities to a minimum and give you good examples accompanied by informative slides and helpful audio to them.

So maybe you have picked up the sentence: ის ჩაწერს წიგნში somewhere and have already understood that it means he is writing in a book. In this sentence ის is the subject. The pronoun ის can actually refer to male or female subjects because Georgian does not distinguish any genders. Therefore our sentence could also mean she is writing in a book. So be careful and observe the context of this sentence to find out what is meant!

ჩაწერს is the verb. How should you conjugate it in the present tense? In the three persons? In singular and plural? First, it is helpful to understand that most Georgian verbs have a verb root (or stem) - in this case -წერ- The syllable (or prefix) in front of it ჩა- is often called the preverb and in Georgian it somewhat specifies the meaning of the verb. So if -წერ- means to write // schreiben, then the preverb ჩა- indicates that something is being written into something, say a notebook. Other preverbs indicate other forms of writing, e.g. გადაწერს - to copy something somewhere // etwas wohin kopieren, abschreiben. The preverb და- as in დაწერს has no specific meaning, it indicates simple writing // einfaches Schreiben and is synonym in meaning to using the verb without preferb: დაწერს = წერს. Essentially, the preverbs are similar to prefixes in English (to overwrite, to underwrite) or in German: etwas unterschreiben, etwas umschreiben.

The second meaning of the preverb is that it can indicate the future indicative tense, so ის ჩაწერს can refer to the present: He writes into something // Er schreibt wohinein. Or it can refer to the future: He is going go write into something // Er wird wohinein schreiben. Again, the context should give you a hint whether ჩაწერს refers to the present or the future.

The suffix -ს in დაწერს is one of the subject markers in a Georgian verb, marking the acting agent, the subject, here the person writing is third person singular: ის წერს - she^[1] writes // sie schreibt. The subject marker ვ- before the word, marks the subject as being first person in singular and plural: მე ვწერ - I write // ich schreibe. When together with the subject marker -თ as a suffix it marks the first person plural: ჩვენ ვწერთ - we write // wir schreiben. The second person singular has no subject markers in this verb: შენ წერ - you write // du schreibst. The second person plural has the subject marker -თ of the second person: თქვენ წერთ - you write // ihr schreibt. The third person plural of -წერ- has the subject marker -ენ: ისინი წერენ - they write // sie schreiben.

Therefore the conjugation table for the present tense would be:

For the future tense (or specific kinds of writing in the present) you would add the preverb: მე დავწერ წიგნში - I am going to write in a book // ich werde in einem Buch schreiben. ის გადაწერს - she copies in writing // sie schreibt ab; sie kopiert. Learn more about the verb დაწერს here.

Lesson 2: Verb Objects

Next to becoming familiar with the basic conjugation of the Georgian verbs in the present tense, it is useful to understand how to use and declense the objects of the verb’s action, as in our (now extended) example from Lesson 1: ის ჩაწერს სიტყვას წიგნში - she is writing a

The Georgian Language UniverseStefan

The last thing to learn from the sentence ის ჩაწერს წიგნში in this lesson is that the verb does not actually refer to an object here, we do not get the information what exactly is written into the book. The verb ჩაწერს is used intransitively. We will learn about objects in Lesson 2. Here, წიგნში is derived from წიგნი - the book; which is used with the preposition -ში, meaning into. Another example would be სახლში, which is based on სახლი - the house. Therefore, სახლში means into the house or inside the house. Find out more about the Georgian prepositions on this page.

New Vocabulary

Learn these new words below. For the new verbs ხედავს and კითხულობს, look up and learn their conjugations in the present tense:

Learn Actively

1. Explain in your own words. What are the verb root, the preverb and the subject marker? Find one example for each.

2. Translate the following sentences into English:
   2.1 ჩვენ ვხედავთ.
   2.2 ისინი კითხულობენ.
   2.3 შენ წერ.

3. Translate the following sentences into Georgian:
   3.1 He is reading.
   3.2 You see. [singular and plural you]
   3.3 They are writing.

4. Translate the following text into English:

ეკა, გიორგი და ლევანი კითხულობენ. მე ვხედავ, რომ ნინო წერს.
სამი კითხულობენ, მაგრამ ერთი წერს.

Listening Comprehension

1. Listen to Eka in the video below. Write down using Georgian what she is saying in Georgian and then translate into English:

Link to the solutions and comments page for Lesson 1 ...