The Georgian alphabet33 letters, one sound each

Three scripts

Georgian has had three writing systems: Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri and Mkhedruli. Asomtavruli is the oldest — monumental letters, all the same height, like capitals. Nuskhuri came later as a faster handwritten form and was used mostly in church books. Mkhedruli is the everyday script that gradually replaced the other two and is used for all modern Georgian. The alphabet in this section is Mkhedruli.

No capital letters

Unlike English, Mkhedruli has no separate capital letters — each sound has just one shape. Where English would use a capital (the start of a sentence, a name), Georgian simply doesn't. Sometimes you'll see Mtavruli: the same 33 letters drawn larger and more geometric. It isn't a separate alphabet or extra letters, just another style, and it shows up mostly in headings and logos, not in running text.

One letter, one sound

English spelling is famously unpredictable: though, through and tough don't rhyme. Georgian is the opposite: every letter stands for exactly one sound, and every sound is written with exactly one letter. There are no silent letters, no letter pairs like sh or th, and almost no exceptions. A word is read exactly the way it's written — once you know all 33 letters, you can read any text out loud.

Writing lines

Mkhedruli letters sit on lines like English ones, with three zones: a middle zone that only a few letters fit into entirely (ა, ი, ო, თ), and ascenders and descenders — most letters reach either above the top line (ბ, ნ, მ, ს) or below the bottom one (გ, დ, ე, ლ). A few reach both ways (ქ, ჭ, ჯ). Think of English b and p: in Georgian, almost every letter has a tail like that.

Why the groups aren't in alphabetical order

The letters here are shown in learning groups, not in alphabetical order, because that's easier to remember. The first groups hold the most frequent letters with sounds English already has. The hard ones — the ejective consonants (კ, პ, ტ, ჭ, წ, ყ) and the sounds made far back in the throat (ღ, ხ) — come in their own groups near the end, once you have familiar sounds to compare them with.