Thoughts on my attempts to learn Georgian mainly through immersion. Kartuli ena is Georgian for Georgian (language).
With technology (i.e. my computer and internet connection) as well as the ubiquity of American culture, I find that it is easier than it should be to cushion myself in an English environment, hampering my Georgian learning skills
My host family has been very helpful in teaching me Georgian words and phrases when I ask. Oftentimes my host sister will write down the Georgian translation of English words I am teaching her. If only that meant they would stay in my brain!
I can feel that now that I am older, it is significantly harder to pick up on a new language and remember it! For those of you who are about to cry about me complaining about being 25 and thinking I’m old, the window of prime language learning time has long passed me by.
One of my first full Georgian phrases I could successfully say (especially for the awful guttural sound I simply can’t make) was “Meti aghar minda” which means “I don’t want anymore” since my host family will keep offering me food until that point. They usually laugh when I say it and then stop feeding me.
The few days of language training we got at training really were helpful for the short amount of time we spent learning the language. I just wish that I had retained all of the information instead of merely writing it down!
I have a variety of language sources that I try to look at: Beginner’s Georgian by Dodona Kiziria, a Georgian-English phrasebook, a workbook given to us during orientation, the Peace Corps language manuals, and a Georgian-English dictionary I bought at Prospero’s, the English language bookstore all the expats love. Most of all, though, is the thirty-cent notebook I have been writing down new words and phrases in. I carry it around with me most places. My host family will laugh when I bring it to a meal but they are so good about writing down new phrases for me. I try to write the words in Georgian and they just tell me ‘ara’ (no) and eventually just write the word for me.
There are some serious gaps in even my basic knowledge. I say ‘good morning’ basically every day but don’t really say any of the other ‘good’ phrases. They don’t seem to be used as much, and I avoid them because they all include the dreaded guttural. I don’t remember the phrases exactly.
However, due to the joys of immersion, I have learned several words I either never learned in Russian or learned far later on, like “(bike) pump”, “phone charger”, “left-handed”, “bread basket”, etc.
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I'm trying harder to study Georgian now as my English teaching until the end of September appears to be extremely limited. I tested out my knowledge of the verbs to come and go with trying to tell my host mom that I want to go to Tbilisi tomorrow for a friend's birthday. However, since this seemed like a big feat, I decided to write it down. Between being able to read upside down and wondering why I was trying so hard to say something, she guessed that I was going to Tbilisi. Still, the conversation had a decent amount of Georgian in it.
Yesterday's big victory was learning 4 new ways to say "Shut up!" I had already learned that "ena" (language/tongue) can be yelled at a person to tell them to be quiet. Living with teenagers has some benefits.
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Small language victories include a few interactions with friends in the village entirely in Georgian (also incredibly basic). More and more, things are starting to crystallize, but I'm still relying on English/Russian a lot. Hopefully I can find a tutor at school. I'm also learning through my friends' experiences. A fellow TLGer posted this on Facebook recently, and I laughed. It says a lot more about the Georgian mindset than mere linguistics, but I thought it worth sharing anyway.
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October update-I'm slowly learning more and more, especially in class. I'm now a master of words like "letter", "word", "write", etc. I can also buy things (sometimes) without reverting to Russian.
Georgian is an agglutinative language, which means that instead of having a separate word for each new piece of information, they stick a lot of information into one word. In addition, instead of having prepositions, Georgia has suffixes. Thus, to say 'I'm in Hannah's room' or 'I'm with Hannah', you just say 'Hanastan'. Since this sounds like a country to me, I have declared my room a sovereign nation that I get to rule. Ok, not really, but it still sounds way cooler than 'Hannah's room'.
The word for human is 'adamiani'. '-iani' means something like '-ish' or '-y', so this word means Adamish, which I thought was pretty cool. Also makes the word easier to remember, which is nice every once in a 100 confusing words.
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gizhi Marti = crazy March...not words you want to hear after barely surviving February
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I'm trying harder to study Georgian now as my English teaching until the end of September appears to be extremely limited. I tested out my knowledge of the verbs to come and go with trying to tell my host mom that I want to go to Tbilisi tomorrow for a friend's birthday. However, since this seemed like a big feat, I decided to write it down. Between being able to read upside down and wondering why I was trying so hard to say something, she guessed that I was going to Tbilisi. Still, the conversation had a decent amount of Georgian in it.
Yesterday's big victory was learning 4 new ways to say "Shut up!" I had already learned that "ena" (language/tongue) can be yelled at a person to tell them to be quiet. Living with teenagers has some benefits.
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Small language victories include a few interactions with friends in the village entirely in Georgian (also incredibly basic). More and more, things are starting to crystallize, but I'm still relying on English/Russian a lot. Hopefully I can find a tutor at school. I'm also learning through my friends' experiences. A fellow TLGer posted this on Facebook recently, and I laughed. It says a lot more about the Georgian mindset than mere linguistics, but I thought it worth sharing anyway.
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October update-I'm slowly learning more and more, especially in class. I'm now a master of words like "letter", "word", "write", etc. I can also buy things (sometimes) without reverting to Russian.
Georgian is an agglutinative language, which means that instead of having a separate word for each new piece of information, they stick a lot of information into one word. In addition, instead of having prepositions, Georgia has suffixes. Thus, to say 'I'm in Hannah's room' or 'I'm with Hannah', you just say 'Hanastan'. Since this sounds like a country to me, I have declared my room a sovereign nation that I get to rule. Ok, not really, but it still sounds way cooler than 'Hannah's room'.
The word for human is 'adamiani'. '-iani' means something like '-ish' or '-y', so this word means Adamish, which I thought was pretty cool. Also makes the word easier to remember, which is nice every once in a 100 confusing words.
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gizhi Marti = crazy March...not words you want to hear after barely surviving February
