Talk:Georgian scripts

Georgia Through Earth, Fire, Air and Water

I have removed citations of

Berman, Michael; Rusieshvili, Manana; Kalandadze, Ketevan (2012). Georgia Through Earth, Fire, Air and Water. John Hunt Publishing. p. 4. ISBN 978-1-78099271-6.

The whole of the cited page is copied from a 2010 version of this Wikipedia article. Kanguole 12:04, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that! — kwami (talk) 01:10, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Bold and italic?

Does Georgian have bold and italic? I don't mean in MS Word – in Word, you can add fake bold or italic facing to Chinese, but Chinese really has neither. I'm wondering if Georgian has those faces apart from the faking that MS does. — kwami (talk) 05:00, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

What do you mean exactly? Bold or italic what? Modern fonts? Jaqeli (talk) 10:26, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Does Georgian traditionally appear in bold or italic? Do computer fonts have separate bold and italic designs? Or do you just have a single font that World makes heavier or slanted? If the latter, how do publications indicate emphasis? — kwami (talk) 17:03, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it traditionally ever had something like that. Digitally though you can have bold or italic letters. Jaqeli (talk) 17:10, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, digitally any script can be manipulated this way, whether it actually has bold and italic typefaces or not.

Was Nuskhuri ever used for emphasis within a line, or only for section titles?

Was red vs. black ink used?

What about the names of books in citations? Are they normal typeface?

Take the bold text in this file. Is that something that is only seen in digital documents? — kwami (talk) 17:14, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Re. punctuation, am I correct in concluding that here, : is used as a word divider, ჻ as a sentence or clause divider, and ·჻ (four dots) as a paragraph divider? He also has a double four-dot divider at one point. Do you think he's following any particular tradition, or do people personalize punctuation, so that it's different for each person? — kwami (talk) 17:32, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Kintsurashvili is well-known calligrapher so I think he's following a Georgian calligraphic tradition but unfortunately I cannot tell how those dots were supposed to be used. I know abstractly but by definition being exact I cannot tell. Jaqeli (talk) 17:37, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Additional/obsolete letters

BTW, in print, ჲ is x-height, ჷ and ჳ have descenders, ჱ and ჵ have ascenders, and ჴ and ჶ have both. Do you know if the same is true of handwriting? — kwami (talk) 01:09, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

And what function did the obsolete letters have in Georgian? ჴ is easy: I assume Old Georgian distinguished /qʰ/ from /qʼ/, and the distinction was lost. But the others: Were they diphthongs or long vowels? Or did they transcribe Greek sounds which never had Georgian equivalents? — kwami (talk) 01:31, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Happy Easter Kwami! Those 5 were used only for Georgian language. ჱ equaled ეჲ like ქრისტეჲ - ქრისტჱ (christ). ჲ like დედოფლისაჲ (queen's) and was always written in the end and had same pronounce as ი (i). ჳ equaled ვი (vi) sound for example სხჳსი (others') and in modern Georgian it is now written as სხვისი. ჵ was pronounced as equaled Hoi like in ჵ წმიდაო ღმრთისმშობელო (Hoi Holy Virgin Mary). Jaqeli (talk) 11:36, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

That's good info to add. But were they always equivalent? Or were they once different vowels, but over time the distinction was lost, so that ჳ and ვი were not originally pronounced the same, but came to be in the modern language? For example, in English, u was once pronounced [y], and eu was once [ew], but now they're both [ju]. Could ჳ maybe have been a Greek [y] sound, which was lost in both Greek (it's now [i]) and in Georgian? (That's basically the history of Cyrillic Ѵ izhitsa).

So, in handwriting, do they look like they do in print?

Please verify what I say about ჵ is correct.

Happy Easter! — kwami (talk) 20:43, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Handwritten and print ჳ are the same. I don't know exactly how that transition happened from ჳ to ვი. I think Chavchavadze removed it because the letter equaled two sounds so he preffered to write with two letters. Looking now, indeed it is odd for us to write two sounds with one letter so I think that was the main reason Chavchavadze removed all those five letters. None of them so to say became redundant in that period, it was just reform of the Georgian intellectuals back then who removed them by making written Georgian more easy to write so I doubt those letters became useless on their own. As for ჵ, it was mostly used in the begining of the sentences and had an emotional meaning like Hoi or longor sound ოოოოო (o). Jaqeli (talk) 07:32, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Presumably the sounds would have been conflated centuries earlier, not when the letters were removed! English u and eu are still spelled differently, despite being pronounced the same for centuries. If ჳ has always been used for two sounds, that would suggest that the script was designed for some language besides Georgian. I guess we'll need to find a source on the history of Georgian if we're to answer this. — kwami (talk) 18:54, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

A letter always representing two sounds is very common, at least for consonants. X always means /ks/ in Latin, psi and ksi always mean /ps/ and /ks/ in Greek. Also, there existed ligatures like ȣ for ou in Greek. So we can't exclude the possibility that something that is two sounds to us is just one special sound to some inventor, or some inventor just created some spurious letters based on ligatures of other scripts. Until we get proper source on this, of course. --Ahyangyi (talk) 04:25, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Strikes me, as an interested reader, that there is too little background information in the article on the circumstances behind these letters becoming "obsolete". The Society for the Spreading of Literacy among Georgians did not juat wave its magical pen and suddenly they were gone from use. Common sense says that it would have taken generations to be completed, and there would have been opposition (which implies high level support for the changes). So how quickly did it happen. And what happened during the Soviet period? Also, how aware are modern Georgians of these letters - are they aware enough to read old books that would have used the obsolete letters? Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 02:00, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Graphic variation of bani

You've removed this twice, saying the letters are "not related", but I keep seeing bani written much like mani, with the bottom loops written the same:

ბ (bani) may be written with a wavy line at top and a straight side, like a mirror image of ნ (nari).

Is there some way we could word this that you'd be happy with? — kwami (talk) 20:43, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

ბ (bani) and მ (mani) or ნ (nari) have nothing in common. If you look closely you'll see that line or throat which goes up from ბ is in the very middle which is not true on მ or ნ. მ has a line going up on the right side where ნ on the left thus not in the center or in the middle. That's why I remove them because they have nothing in common in handwriting at all. Jaqeli (talk) 07:37, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

That's what I meant. I handwriting, bani may have the straight side of mani. — kwami (talk) 18:51, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Haven't you read what I've said? ბ has no common handwriting relations with ნ or მ. Their relations are zero. Jaqeli (talk) 10:04, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Source for alleged 430AD date of earliest known inscription

My tags requesting a proper citation for this claim have been repeatedly removed from the article. The inscription in question is undated, so how can such a specific date be claimed for it? Vaxtang Beridze (in The Treasures of Georgia) just writes "Even earlier examples of written Georgian, dating from the first half of the fifth century, have been discovered in the ruins of one of the Georgian monasteries in Palestine". This implies an archeological excavation uncovered them - in which case there should be a proper archaeological report somewhere that can be cited about this find, and not some manual about modern Georgian. And the actual site should be stated, not the vague "in a church in Bethlehem" text that is currently there. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 20:57, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Your editing is becoming very disruptive. You've been told several times already that it's reffed and if you click on those 2 sources you'll see an answer to your concern. Jaqeli 21:35, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

And your allowal of deceptive or false content in this article is becoming troubling (I already noted this [1] which I corrected). This article is not perfect and your removal of tags designed to improve it are not helpful edits. In this particular case your sources are general and are not specialist works on archaeology. And they do not even support the content you claim is correct! The inscription is "dated 430 AD" the article currently claims - and this is for an iscription that is not actually dated. What the sources you cite for this claim actually say is "dated to c430" and "dates from c430", i.e. it is an estimated date, and those sources give no references for where this date estimation comes from. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 16:14, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Do you have some problems with understanding English? Sources are there. Just click on it and stop disrupting the article. Jaqeli 16:51, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

The lack of understanding of English is from you, if you are unable to understand that saying "dated 430 AD" is different from saying "dates from c430 AD". The isncription is NOT "dated 430 AD" and no source you have presented is is claiming it is "dated 430 AD". Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 18:15, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

I am afraid you literally have problems with English. You're seriously WP:NOTTHERE. Jaqeli 08:08, 9 August 2014 (UTC)