GEORGIAN LANGUAGE. The Georgian language, which is also spoken by the Mingralians, Lazians, and the Suani, belongs to the Iberian family. The chief characteristics of it are as fol lows. Its alphabet consists of thirty-five letters, it has no articles, the substantives have eight cases and no genders, the adjectives, when associated with nouns, are indeclinable, but when they stand by themselves are declined ; the comparative is formed by the prefix u and the suffix si, and car dinals are obtained by prefixing me to the ordinals. It possesses eight conjugations with several minor subdivisions, and the different persons are indi cated by terminations and personal prefixes ; it has several forms for the prterite and the future tenses, and only one form for the present tense ; three modes, viz., indicative, imperative, and the participle, and supplies the place of the infinitive by a nonzen verbale ; it has postpositions governing different cases, in addition to the prepositions, and can multiply verbs to any extent by the ter minations eleba and ala, form abstracts from adjec tives by the terminations oba and eba, as well as active personal nouns, adjectives—both active and passive—and diminutives, by various terminations and prefixes, and its construction allows many liberties. From the venerable old Georgian lan
guage a dialect developed itself, in the course of time, by the introduction into it of many Arme nian, Greek, Turkish, and other foreign words, and by the viciation of the pronunciation and spelling of many expressions. The two dialects have distinct alphabets, the alphabet in which the old Georgian is written is called Kitzuri, i.e., the sacred, and consists of the letters invented by Mies rob, and the alphabet of the modern Georgian is called Keduull, and is supposed to have been in- I vented by the Georgians themselves in the r4th century. The old language is the ecclesiastical or literary, and is employed in all sacred and literal}, writings, whilst the modern is the civil dialect, or the dialect of common life (lingua vulgaris) ; comp. Ersclz wed Gruber's Encyklopiidie, s. v. Geo:vier, p. 192 ; Eichhorn, Allgenzeine Bibliothek der bibli schen Literatur, vol. p. 156, ff.—C. D. G.