The Kartvelian language family

The Kartvelian languages form an independent South Caucasian family: Georgian, Mingrelian, Laz and Svan. They are unrelated to Indo-European or Turkic languages.

The Kartvelian (South Caucasian) languages are an independent family, unrelated to Indo-European, Turkic or Semitic. They comprise Georgian, Mingrelian, Laz and Svan.

Georgian is the only one with a long written tradition and official status. Mingrelian and Laz (together called Zan) are spoken in western Georgia and along the Black Sea coast, while Svan, spoken in the mountains of Svaneti, is held to be the earliest branch to split off.

The depth of the family's divergence is estimated at several millennia. For the region's history, Kartvelian is among the key pieces of evidence for the antiquity and distinctiveness of the South Caucasus population.

The relationships within the family and the proto-language (Proto-Kartvelian) have been reconstructed by comparative linguistics. This work was founded by Georgian scholars — Arnold Chikobava, and Thomas Gamkrelidze and Givi Machavariani (their study of the sonant system and ablaut, 1965); Georgy Klimov compiled the etymological dictionary of the Kartvelian languages.