If you walk through Tbilisi, you will notice the curling, rounded letters on every shop sign. They don’t look like Latin, Greek or Cyrillic letters, because they aren’t. Georgian has its own alphabet, used for Georgian and its sister languages (Mingrelian, Svan and Laz) and for no other language family in the world.

One alphabet, three scripts

The Georgian writing system has developed through three forms, and remarkably, all three are still in use:

  • Asomtavruli (ასომთავრული), “capital letters”: the oldest form, with large, round, monumental letters. It appears on the earliest church inscriptions.
  • Nuskhuri (ნუსხური): a smaller, more practical script that developed from around the 9th century, used for writing church manuscripts.
  • Mkhedruli (მხედრული): the modern script, first known from the 10th century and standard for everyday writing by the 11th. It is what Georgians read and write today.

Asomtavruli and Nuskhuri are still used by the Georgian Orthodox Church, in icons, inscriptions and religious texts. A Georgian child learns Mkhedruli at school, but can recognise the older letters on church walls a thousand years old.

How old is it?

The oldest Georgian inscriptions found so far date from the 5th century: one from a Georgian monastery near Bethlehem (Bir el Qutt), from the 430s, and one on the Bolnisi Sioni church in southern Georgia, from 493–494.

Where the alphabet came from is debated. A medieval Georgian chronicle credits King Parnavaz, around the 3rd century BC. Most modern scholars think it was created later, around the time Georgia adopted Christianity in the 4th century, so that the Bible could be written in Georgian. Either way, Georgians have been writing their language in their own letters for more than 1,500 years.

33 letters, one sound each

Modern Mkhedruli has 33 letters, and each letter stands for one sound. Words are written as they are spoken, with no silent letters and no difference between capital and small letters in everyday writing. Once you learn the letters, you can read any Georgian word aloud.

A living heritage

In 2016, UNESCO added the “Living culture of three writing systems of the Georgian alphabet” to its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The emphasis is on living: this is not a museum alphabet, but one used every day by millions of people.

For a small nation that was invaded and ruled by larger empires again and again, the alphabet has been one of the strongest threads holding its identity together. Empires changed the borders. They never replaced the letters.

ს — the first letter of საქართველო (Sakartvelo), Georgia’s own name for itself.