Sound system of the Georgian language
Tinatin Bolkvadze, Dodona Kiziria · 2023
There are two groups of sounds in the Georgian language: consonants, which never form syllables, and vowels, which always form syllables. Some scholars assume that in the proto-Kartvelian there were sonant sounds that sometimes-formed syllables. Such sounds do not exist in contemporary Georgian. The triple consonants represent the property that differentiates Georgian from Indo-Germanic languages. The Georgian consonant pairs are composed of fricatives. Within each group, the phonological opposition is based on the voiced and voiceless consonants. In Georgian there are two types of consonant clusters in which the front-row consonants occupy the first place followed by the back-row consonants. The phonologists often use geometrical figures to illustrate the interrelationship of the vowels within any given system.