The Kartvelian languages ( ; ), also known as South Caucasian or Kartvelic languages, are a language family indigenous to the South Caucasus and spoken primarily in Georgia. There are approximately 5 million Georgian language speakers worldwide. The Kartvelian family has no known relation to any other language family, making it one of the world's primary language families.
The most widely spoken Kartvelian language, and the only literary language in the family, is the standard Georgian. The earliest written source in any Kartvelian language is an Old Georgian inscription at the once-existing Georgian monastery near Bethlehem, dated to . Georgian scripts are used to write all Kartvelian languages.
Georgian is the official language of Georgia (spoken by 90% of the population) and serves as its main language for literary and business use. It is written with an original and distinctive alphabet, and the oldest surviving literary text dates from the 5th century AD. The old Georgian script seems to have been distinct from every other language, but their alphabetical order largely corresponds to the Greek alphabet, with the exception of letters denoting uniquely Georgian sounds, which are grouped at the end.
Mingrelian has historically been only a spoken, regional language and Mingrelian speakers have traditionally relied on the standard Georgian as their literary language. Through the late 19th century there were no known written Mingrelian grammar books or dictionaries. There have been some limited publications in Mingrelian throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, but printing publications in Mingrelian is controversial because it is seen as deviation from its historic profile as a non-literary language.
The Laz language was written mainly between 1927 and 1937, and then in Turkey using the Latin alphabet. Laz is endangered as its speakers are shifting to Turkish.
The Kartvelian language family consists of four closely related languages:
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The connection between these languages was first reported in linguistic literature by Johann Anton Güldenstädt in his 1773 classification of the languages of the Caucasus, and later proven by G. Rosen, Marie-Félicité Brosset, Franz Bopp and others during the 1840s. Zan is the branch that contains the Mingrelian and Laz languages.
On the basis of glottochronological analysis, Georgi Klimov dates the split of the Proto-Kartvelian into Svan and Proto-Georgian-Zan (Proto-Karto-Zan) to the 19th century BC, and the further division into Georgian and Zan to the 8th century BC, although with the reservation that such dating is very preliminary and substantial further study is required. A 2023 study employing Bayesian linguistic phylogenetics in conjunction with archaeological, ethnoecological, and human population genetic data suggests a substantially earlier separation between Svan and the Karto-Zan languages. This multidisciplinary approach dates the divergence to the Early Copper Age, approximately 7600 years before present.
According to this study it is highly likely that Proto-Karto-Zan (i.e. Proto-Georgian-Zan) prior to its split into Georgian and Zan was spoken by pre-Kura-Araxes and Kura-Araxes farmers that thrived in the watershed of Mtkvari (Kura) River during the Copper and Bronze Ages.
No relationship with other languages, including Northwest Caucasian and/or Northeast Caucasian, has been demonstrated so far. There have been numerous attempts to link Kartvelian languages to other language families, such as the proposed Nostratic family, but these have fallen out of favor. Certain grammatical similarities with Basque, especially in the case system, have often been pointed out. However, the hypothesis of a relationship, which also tends to link the Caucasian languages with other non-Indo-European and non-Semitic languages of the Near East of ancient times, is generally considered to lack conclusive evidence. Any similarities to other linguistic phyla may be due to areal influences. Heavy borrowing in both directions (i.e. from North Caucasian to Kartvelian and vice versa) has been observed; therefore, it is likely that certain grammatical features have been influenced as well.
The Kartvelian languages have traces of grammatical gender based on animacy, classifying objects as intelligent ("who"-class) and unintelligent ("what"-class) beings.
Kartvelian verbs can indicate one, two, or three grammatical persons. A performer of an action is called the subject and affected persons are objects (direct or indirect). The person may be singular or plural. According to the number of persons, the verbs are classified as unipersonal, bipersonal or tripersonal.
Subjects and objects are indicated with special affixes.
By means of special markers Kartvelian verbs can indicate four kinds of action intentionality ("version"):
Subject, direct object and indirect object are coded by the three core-cases, namely ergative, nominative and dative. Although the term "ergative" is traditional, strictly speaking no Kartvelian language features ergative alignment. Rather, they display a mixture of nominative-accusative and active alignment, depending on two factors:
Georgian and Svan have accusative alignment in the Present series (often termed Series I) and active alignment in the Aorist series (Series II).
Laz has extended the case marking of Series II to Series I, thus featuring active alignment regardless of tense.
Mingrelian, on the other hand, has extended the use of the ergative to all intransitive verbs, becoming fully accusative in all series, although with different case marking.