Where Georgian is spoken
Georgian is spoken in 6 countries: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran and 2 more. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.
| Country | Share of population | Estimated speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Georgia | 86% | 4,214,826 |
| Armenia | Not given | Not given |
| Azerbaijan | Not given | Not given |
| Iran | Not given | Not given |
| Russia | Not given | Not given |
| Turkey | Not given | Not given |
Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.
On the map, Georgian is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Georgian.
How many people speak Georgian?
Wikidata gives about 3.7 million speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2014). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.
Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.
Where Georgian sits in the language family tree
Glottolog classifies Georgian as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.
- Kartvelian
- Georgian-Zan
- Georgic
- Georgian
More about Georgian
- Read about Georgian on Wikipedia
- Kartvelian languages map
- Languages spoken in Georgia
- All languages, A to Z
Codes: ISO 639-3 kat, Glottolog nucl1302. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.
Questions about Georgian
Where is Georgian spoken?
Georgian is spoken in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran and 2 more. Unicode CLDR puts it at 86% of the population of Georgia, which is about 4,214,826 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.
How many people speak Georgian?
Wikidata gives about 3.7 million speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 2014). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.
Which language family is Georgian in?
Glottolog places Georgian in the Kartvelian family, in the branch Georgian-Zan and Georgic.