🇬🇪 Georgian
Introductory Course Content
Understand the elementary concepts of the language, train your listening
intensely, and build a basic vocabulary of ca. 100 phrases. From there you can
grow your personal vocabulary over time.
Join us on WhatsApp for weekly conversation sessions (first month free!)
Overview Of Course Material
Welcome 🎊! (click to expand)
Welcome
This course helps you develop the critical skills for success in Georgian in a unique and effective way, through:
- Listening training for recognizing words when people speak.
- The verb-system in ca. 20 short videos, the most complex part.
- Phrases that you know are correct, so you build confidence.
- Essential grammar concepts explained from a foreigner’s perspective.
Here’s a video summary:
It takes around one month to build a strong foundation, with 30 minutes every day. You can also just follow the material in your own time.
Our tip: make it easy to start. Copy the link to this page into a note that you can open both on your computer and phone. Add any other link, screenshots or comments to this note, and it will be your mobile book for review.
Every time you want to practice, you just open this note and get started.
Also, join the WhatsApp group if you like. We’re constantly improving the course and adding resources, and also have study groups sometimes.
https://chat.whatsapp.com/LjnXpLsJjQP0oRdQzZ42im
There are books written about how to learn languages. We’ve read some of those, tried most methods, and believe there is no better way. We actually moved to Georgia to get proof of concept, and continue to work on this method.
Your personal message from Zhazira
Week 1
🧑🏫 A few introductory words about Georgian Grammar
Why is Georgian difficult and easy at the same time?
It’s difficult because it has a unique system, sounds, and script. That makes listening,
recognizing and remembering words challenging. The verb system requires clear explanations.
And it takes a long time to read word-by-word instead of letter-by-letter, making media consumption tough.
Luckily it’s also simple. There are no genders and the verb system is natural to apply once it “clicks”.
And the same roots are used for creating many other words in a poetic, visual, and somewhat
standardized way. That’s the magic of Georgian morphology, which we hope to show with that video.
As an encouragement, most Georgians don’t use perfect grammar either.
And the joy and encouragement they show you for trying even a little
already makes a huge motivation.
🧑🏫 Verb Shorts Part 1/4: Six videos about History,
The Verb Block, Tenses, and Verb Endings.
So, we shared these videos for free on our Instagram page, but here they in a weekly
order with more structure. In sets of 5-6 to watch them together.
With just a few short videos each week, you will learn how the most complex part of Georgian grammar works: the verb system.
Below is some historic context. 1600 years ago the Georgian script appeared in Georgia, and 60 years later already in Bethlehem! Isn’t that cool?
Introducing the block system in the video below.
Thinking of verbs like this will help you understand them.
Let’s introduce each block one-by-one now. The blocks will have a separate video later.
Now we take a look at the tenses in Georgian.
There are more, but we selected the 5 most used ones, and explain how they relate to each other.
Now let’s settle this knowledge by going through some examples.
We’ll start with the same video next week. It’s just for you to see the different blue blocks in action.
That’s it ! Next week another set of shorts 🙂
About memorizing phrases with our app
Let’s say the output is the same. Would you prefer:
- 🚶 Spending 1-hour with slow comfy learning?
- 🏃 Or 20-minutes with intense learning?
If you prefer intense training, you’re right with us.
Our app lets you record the voices of people that teach you new words or phrases. Then practice them alone.
You need to come up with them correctly, and then wait until you test yourself again. It can take 20-30 minutes
to memorize just 12 phrases. But it gets easier over time!
Ideally, you build a routine of minimum 12 phrases every day. Maybe with your coffee in the morning,
or during your trips home? I sometimes combine a morning run with practicing phrases, stacking my routines.
Anyways. The Lingophant app is available for free on the App Store and the Google Play Store.
And honestly, I would not know how to learn this language without it.
I memorized 850 phrases and can have long conversations by now.
You grow your personal vocabulary over time.
Here’s a video that explains more about the app:
📔 In-depth Explanation of Basic Phrases (with practice set)
Here are basic phrases with some explanation.
Watch this video once, and then memorise them with our app. First create an account,
and then unlock the phraseset with the link below. Now you can download them to your phone.
Our free app uses voice recordings by a human person
so you don’t vocalize words using your native language.
🧑🏫 A Lazy Guide to the Alphabet (with tricks to remember each letter)
Normally you’d spend the first 2-3 weeks with your teacher learning the script.
With us you watch this video twice and start practicing phrases on the app.
Every letter has a hint to remember it.
If you prefer learning from a book, here is the book most teachers use.
But take a look at our video first.
Now put it into practice, can you find the words on the left?
Two overviews to help you:
All Letters
Practice hearing and distinguishing the sounds
Recognizing ejective and normal letters is tough. So Lucas recorded words with two similar sound. And you can try to hear the difference And It’s an easy phraseset that may help you very much with this listening skill.
Download the app, create an account, and unlock the set below in the app.
If you want to practice writing:
In our experience it’s enough to write every letter 10 times, and then start copying a small text.
This way, in just a 1-2 hours, you will have learned how to write in Georgian.
Hint: you can save the image with a right click to your computer or phone for later review.
Then add it to the note that contains your other Georgian content as well.
About training your listening skills
The people in the course team have studied 15+ languages,
and this is the best and still unknown method :
Watching content with double subtitles to build listening skills.
In Georgian, however, this method is impossible, due to the script and availability
of subtitles. So we made our own content that you can watch and rewatch.
In the next section, we have 30 minute videos for you to just follow along
and get to know this process. You can then repeat the process with our other videos.
Soon, you’ll have listened to thousands of words, understood the meaning,
and get a feeling of what natural speech is like.
Let’s start.👇
🎧 Listening-Reading: Understand Ira’s
stories about traveling and her designer career.
Meet Ira, a great person and friend of ours 🙂
To understand how this listening-reading method works,
we have cut her video into three parts and created 30-minute versions of it.
You can then repeat the process with the other videos we made by yourself.
You can also use the audio player and it should play in the background.
Or if you like writing on printed notes, we have a pdf
that you can download and print to play with while listening.
Here are the 30 minute follow-along versions
Watch this 30 minute version, it tells you what to focus on. The come back on another day for the second session.
Your second time watching and reviewing. Understanding more already? Come back on another day for the third time.
And the third time now. Let’s see also how much you’ll understand without subtitles.
And here is the uncut video with audio and pdf.
We will recommend re-listening to her audio later on. You can let it run in the background from your phone. It helps to let your brain soak in the language
🧑🏫 Intro to Verbs and Locational
Suffixes (Saying “in, on, with, etc.”)
Let’s touch the most basic
grammar concepts.
We conjugate one verb.
And then we look at the v- and m- group real quick
(more coming later).
And finally, we talk about
postpositions of location.
Here are all of them. You can screenshot / download it and add
it to a Georgian photo album with all your useful screenshots 😇
That’s it for your first week.
We hope you’ve enjoyed your first week. It’s a bit of a set-up but we hope you see
how we make natural learning more efficient. And research really says that input
and automatic output are the best ways to learn.
Also, join the WhatsApp to benefit from reminders and conversation sessions.
https://chat.whatsapp.com/LjnXpLsJjQP0oRdQzZ42im
And if you have feedback, we would be
happy to hear it 🙂 Use this link. Thanks
Week 2
⚡️Listening-Reading: Review old videos.
Welcome to week 2, we hope
you enjoyed the first week.
Wanna listen to Ira a bit to check that you can already understand some words
Even if you just understand 10% that is already an improvement !
Try listening while doing something else. It’s much more
comfortable somehow, and it also works better. You can read
through the script to check for words, and then just listen.
Enjoy!
🧑🏫 Morphology, our must-see overview!
The single most important tool to learn new words:
Morphology, a.k.a. how to create words from roots.
It’s maybe a bit too early for this level of complexity, but it will
help you so much when trying to remember words. Instead of memorizing long
chains of difficult sounds, you just identify the root and make a story about the components around them.
🧙
Become a morphing wizard with us 🙂
We spent months on this video because without it,
there’s no way to memorise all those new words.
So we hope you get this “aaahhh khooo!” moment from it !
And then you’ll have many more “aaaahhh khoooo”
moments with words you might already know.
One we had recently:
- I eat = vchame
- I drink = vsvam
- I wear “clothes” = me matsvia
- Food is “for eating” so Sa-chm-eli
- Clothes are “for wearing” so Tan-sa-ts-meli. “ts” is also a verb root for putting.
You see, sometimes letters go missing, and or words
are added (e.g. Tan = body / with). But at least you have
somewhere to start memorizing from.
And just like that, memorizing words turns from something
impossible into a creative and achievable exercise.
And our app takes care of the timing of when
words need to be memorized again.
🎧 Listening-Reading, with lovely senior Mzia from Tskaltubo
And here’s a wonderful second listening video from Mzia.
Get to know someone who was working in a Soviet Sanatorium,
and then had a peaceful life afterwards. With some fun facts
about post-war Georgia and Georgian “Boomers”
Do the same as with Ira:
- Watch it multiple times,
- Put the link in a note for quick access,
- Write words you want to remember under the link,
- Come back in the future, read the words, and watch it again,
And after a few practice sessions you’ll
also understand her story with only the audio.
It really helps you brain recognize and separate words in the sound Kharcho.
Enjoy 🙂
🎧 Listening-Reading, with lovely senior Guram from Tskaltubo
Here’s Anzori (nickname Guram)
speaking with a strong imeretian accent.
No worries about understanding everything.
We marked the standard verb blocks that you’ll learn
about in the verb shorts in colors, as well as the suffixes.
That way you can recognise these
directional and temporal standard patterns.
We recommend watching these
videos multiple times.
Put the link in a note on your phone. Next time you’re on a bus,
review it and build a natural understanding of the language.
And here’s the audio file and pdf if you prefer that.
🧑🏫 Pronouns, Conjunctions, and Negations
Pronouns are used
to relate to other people.
Conjunctions are mainly
used for locations and logical relations.
Both are very useful!
Overview of pronouns
Overview of Conjunctions
Got feedback? Use this link.
🧑🏫 Verb Shorts Part 2/4: Videos about the tenses
Hey, we shared these videos for free on our Instagram page,
but here they are for you to watch them as part of our course.
With just a few shot videos each week, you will learn how the
most complex part of Georgian grammar works: the verb system.
Let’s take a look at the tenses in Georgian.
There are more, but we selected the 5 most used
ones, and explain how they relate.
Let’s take a another look at
the tenses in Georgian.
These are the blue blocks. Preverbs in the beginning, and suffixes at the end. There is a present / future ending. And the aorist past and the optative have a special ending.
That’s it.
What are those preverbs again? And how to remember the correct ones for each verbs?
Verbs are unique by their root, their verb family (which is the blue suffix) and their preverb (the blue prefix).
And now our favourite video:
the directional preverbs.
Learn in 2 minutes what you will need for every verb (in the future or past, hehe).
This is the most important part, and can help visualize verbs when trying to remember them. Maybe watch this video a few times?
The key here is that the infinitive
can also be a noun.
The next video is that every
verb has a simple root.
Regarding the example of va-p’ir-eb (I plan on doing something)
P’iri is mouth, you’re giving your word / mouth in Georgian.
It’s also the root of promising something, but then it gets a -d- at the end: gp’irdebi.
So yeah, let’s finish with the verb root, which every Georgian verb has.
Recognising verb roots is the #1 skill required for Georgian. It’s also what makes verbs irregular, because some verbs change roots between tenses.
We have a 13 minute morphology video that talks about roots in detail. We mentioned “Dap’ireba” last week, right?
Got feedback? Use this link. Thanks!
⚡️Practice Phrases
The is just your reminder that at some point this week,
you should have your available phrases down to 0.
Words and phrases come back over time when you’re about to forget them.
So check in every day to see if there are new words and soon
you’ll know many useful sentences by heart
It’s the number you see with the cheese
(for Georgian) on the practice screen.
There are some more sets of phrases coming this week.
📔 Phrases for at the Bazari
And here are 17 Phrases for at the Bazari. Get them onto
your app, practice them, and use them the next time you’re shopping.
Got feedback? Please use this link. Thanks!
📔 Phrases to help you ask for clarification
Here’s the phraseset
that you can download the phrases to your
phone and practice them efficiently.
There’s no way around practicing. We can only
make it faster by being efficient with our app 🙂
And soon you’ll know another set of correct phrases to use.
Got feedback? Use this link. Thanks!
Week 3
⚡️Practice phrases and review Listening-Reading. Also this week 😉
Don’t forget to practice phrases on your app. The best occasions are:
- In public transport
- When walking somewhere
- On the toilet
- When waiting for someone
- While doing sports
- Before going to bed
Secondly, you should practice listening and
recognizing words some more. You can go back
to the videos from last week, or just listen to the audio
here. Feel free to download the audio and print the
PDF transcript for reading along.
Do at least 30 minutes of listening-review this week. For real progress, do it every day 🙂
You can also rewatch the video with subtitles upstairs if you don’t
feel ready yet for just listening. Both are very effective methods.
💡 Somehow reviewing a video you already watched
with audio works really well while doing something else.
🧑🏫 Verb Shorts Part 3/4: The Verb Root, Subject and Object Markers,
Version Markers, and a teaser of the future tense.
After these six shorts, you will know how to create a declined verb that
contains three “persons”: the subject, the object, and a version marker
that can direct the action towards something or someone.
How to mark the person doing something?
Usually with a Subject Marker, which has the
-v- ending for the first person.
Don’t hesitate to take a screenshot during the video.
Up next, the Object Markers.
They start with -m- for the first person.
And -g- for the second person.
I promise you is g-p’ir-d-ebi.
They indicate a second person or
object on which an action is performed.
However, some verbs use the Object Marker to show the acting person. Like in Spanish, me gusta. Something is liked by me.
The next videos continue with verb versions.
We can change the meaning and direction of verbs also with a Version Marker.
This way we can have a reflexive “-i-“ version of the verb. Or “-a-“ and
“-e-“ that are directed at another object.
What if we combine Subjective, Objective, and Version markers?
We can have verbs with up to 3 actors / objects!
But there are some rules about this in the video above.
Let’s look at some examples that will tie it all together.
This is how verbs work in the present and future tense, including subject, and object markers.
And now a first step towards the past forms, with the simple imperfect, that just adds -di to the present verb.
For things that continued for a longer time in the past, we use the Imperfect Past.
Got feedback? Use this link. Thanks!
📔 Phrases for Introducing Yourself (with a practice set)
Use the above link to unlock the phraseset
on your account and practice regularly:
– On the bus / metro / train
– Before going to bed
– In the bathroom
– While taking a walk
Got feedback? Use this link. Thanks!
🎧 Listening-Reading with Lukas (1/3). Some stories from his life.
Let us introduce Lucas to you, who already speaks very fast.
Well, that’s how it is with Georgians. Some cannot speak fast.
His real name is Anzori, but names
and nicknames are not always the same.
Still, it is good practice to listen many times.
And after a few times on a few days you can soon
understand this fast speaker too.
Good luck and enjoy that you’re able to understand something.
Even if it feels like nothing. It is working subconsciously.
🎧 Listening-Reading with Lukas (2/3). Listen to his daily routines
🧑🏫 The Case System
The case system isn’t thaaaat complicated, we did manage
to cover the whole system in less than 15 minutes.
You’ll get used to it when practicing phrases or reading texts or listening to
people. But with this knowledge you will recognize them when you need it 🙂
Got feedback? Please use this link. Thanks!
📔 Phrases for talking about Learning Languages (with practice set)
With the following link you can unlock the phraseset on your phone,
download them, and practice them whenever you have a moment.
Got feedback? Use this link. Thanks!
Week 4
🎧 Listening-Reading with Lukas (3/3).
Let’s talk about traveling and advice for foreigners
Another video of fast-talking Lucas. Watch it multiple times until you can recognize words better. Recognizing words in general is pretty difficult and it’s really normal if it’s hard. As long as you’re paying attention, your brain is already learning. Take it easy 🙂
Got feedback? Use this link. Thanks!
🧑🏫 Verb Shorts Part 4/4: Version Markers, Combining Object
And Version Markers, The Imperfect, and the Aorist tense
Let’s finish the full verb system this week.
The next videos continue with the more difficult complex tenses.
There’s the aorist, which is like the simple past. There are two versions,
one with a pre-verb and one without, that uses an -i- instead
Let’s start with
the Aorist,
the unspecified or simple past.
There’s another way to recognise that something happened in the past.
The acting person ends with -ma, and you already know it happened in the Aorist past.
Like if the sentence starts with “Alexma mitkhra”, -> Alex told me.
-ma -> past sentence.
To not confuse you with other versions, we’ve kept another way of creating
the past and future.
One is with pre-verbs.
The other with an -i- which looks simpler but can be confused with a reflective version marker.
Usually it’s used for actions that go without an object. Done by themselves. Intransitive.
What makes verbs irregular?
Usually they have different roots
in the present, future, and past tense.
Also sometimes they don’t
decline the normal way.
It has nothing to do with the meaning changing with different preverbs.
It’s more like not behaving
according to rules.
Let’s look at some irregular examples.
Very important are verbs of movement. You can go rewatch the directional preverbs video that we filmed on the Bagrati church hill of Kutaisi to see how you can remember them.
But in general, here are how to create verbs of movement.
And our last video is about the optative. Then we’re done.
The optative shows optionality, and you’ll see it most commonly used with minda.
Though some people told me they always use the infinitive. But this is the most elegant and for now advanced part of the verb system.
Thanks for your attention to our verb short, we hope
you liked them and it all makes a lot more sense to you now!
Got feedback? Please use this link. Thanks!
📔 Phrases for expressing likes and dislikes (with practice set)
Let’s continue with another set of phrases.
Open the phraseset on your mobile device and add
these phrases to your phone for practicing anywhere.
Got feedback? Please use this link. Thanks!
📔 Phrases for Opinions and Preferences (with practice set)
With the link above, you can download the phrases from
the video to your phone and add them to your practice routine.
Got feedback? Please use this link. Thanks!
🎧 Listening-Reading: We subtitled a 30-minute episode
of famous show Chemi Tsolis Dakalebi (Georgian Desperate Housewives)
Georgian Introductory Course Content
You can find the rest of the episodes here (but without subtitles)
You could proceed in writing your own transcript of the next episode, with help
from Google Translate and running YouTube at 75% of the speed.
In general, watching them at 75% speed is a good idea.
Enjoy 🙂
Got feedback? Please use this link. Thanks!
🎧 Practice reading out aloud with Ira’s video
The “muscle memory” of your mouth
gets trained by actually speaking.
Just read along with this video.
If you found this useful, let us know and we
can easily create more content like this.
Want to request more content? Please use this link. Thanks!
Bonus Material
Continue with private lessons afterwards
Once you have finished this material, you know
all the basics explained in the most efficient way.
How to continue? The most fun way is
to start doing private lessons with our app.
After this course:
– You’ve understood the verb system, the
most difficult part of the language.
– You have around 100 useful phrases in
your active vocabulary, if you used our app.
– And you have listened to 70+ minutes of Georgian
with understandable subtitles, hopefully multiple times.
Now you can continue learning from
people, based on your needs and interests.
In around 12 lessons I have learned 600 phrases. That’s enough
for me to have long conversations and impress native speakers.
I have friends I can only speak Georgian with.
And once you start talking, you can use
your app to learn 5-10 words in a night.
So have lessons or conversations, ask people to record phrases,
and you can memorize like 40 new phrases each week.
Keep memorizing
We have 2-3 teachers for online lessons that can help you.
Send us an email to team@lingophant.com or send
us a message on WhatsApp, and we will hook you up
(we don’t want to put their phone number online here
and 100% of what you pay them goes to them).
Good Job on finishing. And this is just the beginning
of a beautiful journey of speaking Georgian.
🙌
We hope you found it valuable and please
recommend us to your friends if you did 😇
Support us back!
We hope we’ve saved you many hours of frustration
by making it as clear and easy as possible.
It has been a lot of work, and we’d be grateful
about any donation. We need it to keep
creating content.
So thanks a lot to those people
who keep this project running!