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Yeah, the "dzh" is the Russian way of transliterating of the "j" or "g" sound (as in "gem"). That letter exists as a single character in Georgian but not in Russian. But, conversely, there is no "f" in Georgian (they substitute it with a "p"), so what the hell is it doing there? So what you have is a Georgian name tranliterated into Russian characters then into English. Cut out the Russian middleman & you might get Yosif (or Yosip?) Vissarianovich Jugashvili. I'm sorry.
I don't know if Stepan, spelled that way, is or isn't a Georgian name honestly (I couldn't find a variation of Stephen on the lone list I found & can't recall ever seeing one) but that spelling is popular in Russia, Ukraine & I think I've seen it attached to Bulgarian as well. Georgian is completely unrelated to those Slavic languages, BTW, despite the close proximity.
Odd that it seems more prevelant in the Cyrillic countries..or maybe it's just coincidence, pretty neat though. Languages, ethnic origins etc are a keen interest of mine so I find conversations such as this quite a bit of fun.
I'm definitely aware of Georgian not being Slavic, but something I am curious about - what linguistic group does it belong to? Any relation to Armenian, or Turkish for instance?
None. It may be related to even lesser known languages in the immediate region but I don't think anyone has conclusively proven even that.
Armenian actually is its own little branch of the Indo-European language family related (rather distantly) to English. Albanian & Greek share this distinction of being their own unique branches of Indo-European.
Azerbaijani, spoken in that third nation around there that was once a Soviet republic, IS a Turkic language.
None. It may be related to even lesser known languages in the immediate region but I don't think anyone has conclusively proven even that.
So it's not even established at this point as to whether it's Indo-European? Or am I misunderstanding? Is their alphabet also unique?
Very cool. Kind of reminds me of Hungarian in a way - an established language but unrelated to it's neighbors. (I think Finnish might have some sort of distant relation though)
Yeah, according so wiki, it came out of Mingrelian and Laz (both languages coming from that region... )
I actually knew some Georgian when i was a kid, not anymore, forgot everything... Sucks, it's a really cool language to know...
And damned near impossible to pronounce!
Yeah, Polish uses alot of so-called digraphs, two letters to make one sound. "Sz" in Polish has the same pronounciation as "sh" in English.
Here's a silly Czech one.
Strč prst skrz krk.
It means "stick your finger through the neck."![]()