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Monday, September 21, 2015

Georgian in the news

GEORGIA TODAY: Georgian Among 10 Oldest Languages Still Spoken in the World Today.
Lani Seelinger of theculturetrip.com has compiled a list of the ten oldest languages still spoken in the world today. Georgian features at number nine after Hebrew, Tamil, Lithuanian, Farsi, Icelandic, Macedonian, Basque and Finnish, and followed by Irish Gaelic.
I'm not sure the full list would be as few as ten. Aramaic, for example should be on it as well.
Georgian is the biggest Kartvelian language, and it is the only Caucasian language with an ancient literary tradition. Its beautiful and unique alphabet is also quite old – it is thought to have been adapted from Aramaic as far back as the third century AD.
And some form of the written language may be even older than that. For background on Georgian and why it matters to PaleoJudaica, see here and links.