Georgia Unified Foreign Language cheat sheet

Georgian is a Kartvelian language with no gender and no grammatical agreement of adjectives with nouns, so listening for case endings on nouns carries more information than adjective inflection.

Six Georgian cases mark core relations: nominative -ი, ergative -მა, dative -ს, genitive -ის, instrumental -ით, adverbial -ად; the ergative appears only in the aorist series for transitive subjects.

Georgian verb agreement is polypersonal: the verb prefix and suffix cross-reference subject and objects (მიცემს 'gives it to me'), so a single verb form can encode three participants.

The preverb signals direction and aspect: მი- 'away/thither', მო- 'hither', შე- 'in', გა- 'out', ა- 'up', ჩა- 'down'; preverb plus stem often marks perfective future or aorist.

Georgian has no lexical stress contrast that changes meaning; stress is weak and typically on the antepenult or penult, so do not build listening decisions on stress placement.

Georgian orthography is phonemic: 33 letters, one sound per letter, no upper/lower case; transcription errors in listening notes usually mean a misheard consonant cluster, not a spelling irregularity.

Distinguish the aspirated stops ფ თ ქ ც ჩ from the ejective/glottalized პ ტ კ წ ჭ; minimal pairs such as ფარი 'shield' versus პარი are frequent distractors in audio items.

Numbers and times are read right-to-left in compounds: ოცდაერთი '21' = ოცი '20' + და 'and' + ერთი '1'; dates use ordinal-style forms, so listen for the -ე suffix.

Georgian word order is discourse-driven, not fixed: the verb normally sits near the end, but focused constituents move left of the verb, so a fronted object signals emphasis or contrast.

The split-ergative pattern is the key reading cue: present/future series use nominative subject + dative object; aorist series uses ergative subject (-მა) + nominative object.

Georgian has no definite or indefinite article; definiteness is inferred from context, word order, and the demonstratives ეს 'this' and ის 'that', so translations adding 'the' are interpretive.

Postpositions govern specific cases: -ზე 'on' and -თან 'at, with' take the dative, -გან 'from' takes the genitive, -მდე 'up to' takes the dative; the case ending is the reliable reading anchor.

The Georgian verb has screeves (tense-aspect-mood series); the present series marks ongoing or habitual, the aorist marks a completed single event, and the perfect series marks resultative or evidential meaning.

Conjunctions mark clause type: რომ 'that/because', თუ 'if/whether', მაგრამ 'but', ამიტომ 'therefore'; scanning for these quickly segments long Georgian sentences.

Georgian uses the same form for present and future in many verbs, with the preverb distinguishing future (ვწერ 'I write' vs დავწერ 'I will write'), so absence of a preverb often means non-future.

Loanwords are adapted phonologically (e.g., სტუდენტი 'student', ტელეფონი 'telephone'), so recognizing adapted international vocabulary speeds reading of unfamiliar texts.

Georgian nouns: plural in -ებ- (კაცი 'man' → კაცები), but plural is not marked when a numeral is present (სამი კაცი 'three men').

Case endings attach after the plural marker: კაც-ებ-ს (dative plural), კაც-ებ-ის (genitive plural); the genitive singular in -ის is identical to the dative plural in many paradigms.

Verb classes: Georgian has transitive, intransitive (passive in form), and medial verbs; the aorist of transitive verbs takes ergative subjects, intransitives take nominative subjects.

Thematic suffixes mark screeves: -ს/-ა present, -და/-ა aorist, -ს/-ა future; the imperfect takes -დ- (ვწერდი 'I was writing'), the conditional adds -იდ- (დავწერდი 'I would write').

Person markers: ვ- 1sg subject, ხ-/∅ 2sg, ∅/-ს 3sg, ვ-...-თ 1pl, -თ 2pl, -ენ/-ან 3pl; object markers (მ-, გ-, ∅, გვ-, გ-, ∅) precede the stem.

Version vowels (the pre-stem vowel) mark beneficiary: ა- neutral, ი- 'for oneself', უ- 'for him/her/it' (ვუწერ 'I write to him'), ე- 'for them/for me'.

Adjective agreement is absent; attributive adjectives precede the noun unchanged (კარგი სახლი 'good house', კარგი სახლები 'good houses'), and comparative uses უფრო 'more', superlative uses ყველაზე 'most'.

The copula is a suffix in the present: -ა (ის სტუდენტია 'he is a student'), -არ-/-ხარ for 2sg (სტუდენტი ხარ), and the negative copula is არ არის or the clitic -ა + არ.

Georgian script (mkhedruli) is unicameral: 33 letters, no capitals, so proper nouns are not capitalized; sentence boundaries are marked only by punctuation such as the period and the Georgian question mark.

Georgian punctuation uses „ “ style quotation marks and the comma before subordinate clauses introduced by რომ; avoid English-style capitalization of nationalities and months.

Register: formal writing uses full verb forms and the polite plural address თქვენ 'you (polite/plural)' with 2pl verb agreement; informal writing uses შენ with 2sg agreement.

Cohesion in Georgian essays relies on clause-final verbs; place the finite verb last in the clause and keep preverb + stem together, since nothing may intervene between them.

A well-formed Georgian paragraph in exam tasks typically opens with a topic sentence, supports it with 2-3 clauses using რომ/ამიტომ, and closes with a result clause; aim for 80-120 words for a standard B1/B2 prompt.

Direct speech is introduced with a colon and the verb თქვა 'said' or აღნიშნა 'noted'; reported speech often keeps the same tense with რომ + clause rather than backshifting.

Transliteration standard: Georgian to Latin uses the national system (ღ = gh, შ = sh, ჩ = ch, ც = ts, ძ = dz, ჯ = j, ხ = kh, ყ = q), which matters when writing names in a Latin-script context.

Formal letters: greeting მოგესალმებით 'greetings', closing პატივისცემით 'respectfully'; the addressee's name takes the dative with the vocative particle -ო only in direct address.

Georgian has no lexical stress contrast, but vowel length is not distinctive either; intelligibility depends on correct consonants, especially the ejective series პ ტ კ წ ჭ and the uvular ყ.

The consonant clusters ღმ, ბრდღვნ, გვფრცქვნ are pronounced as written without epenthetic vowels; slow articulation of clusters is preferable to inserting vowels that change the word.

Polite address: use თქვენ + 2pl verb for formality (როგორ ხართ? 'how are you?'), შენ + 2sg with peers; the vocative adds -ო to names and kinship terms (ბატონო, შვილო).

Fluency markers: აბა 'well/so', ხომ? 'right?', ესე იგი 'that is', მოკლედ 'in short'; these are natural fillers and are acceptable in oral exam responses.

Georgian question intonation rises on the focused word, not necessarily at the end; the particle -ა or ხომ marks yes/no questions, and the answer repeats the verb rather than using a bare 'yes'.

The aorist is the narrative tense for oral storytelling: sequence events with ergative subjects (მან თქვა 'he said'), and use the present series for description and background.

Numbers, prices, and telephone numbers are read in full with და between tens and units (ოცდახუთი '25'), and thousands use ათასი as a separate word.

Self-correction is expected: restart with ბოდიში 'sorry' or სწორედ 'exactly', and avoid switching to English mid-clause, since examiners rate sustained Georgian production.