Turkish → Georgian
Georgian uses 33 sounds. You already own 16 of them from Turkish. The other 17 are the work — and 15 of those are the dangerous kind: close enough to something you already say that you will substitute them without hearing yourself do it.
The silent swaps
Your mouth has something close enough to reach for. These survive for years precisely because they sound right to you — the fix is hearing the difference first, not trying harder.
the move: postalveolar → alveolar
Georgian: dog · written "ძ"
Your /d͡ʒ/ is the one in cami (mosque).
the move: aspirated
Georgian: money · written "ფ"
Aspirated — a puff of air, like English p in 'pin'.
Your /p/ is the one in pul (stamp).
the move: aspirated
Georgian: fish · written "თ"
Aspirated.
Your /t/ is the one in tuz (salt).
the move: aspirated
Georgian: woman · written "ქ"
Aspirated. ქართული /kʰartʰuli/ = Georgian.
Your /k/ is the one in kara (land / black).
the move: aspirated
Georgian: tea · written "ჩ"
Aspirated.
Your /t͡ʃ/ is the one in çay (tea).
the move: postalveolar → alveolar, aspirated
Georgian: sky · written "ც"
Aspirated.
Your /t͡ʃ/ is the one in çay (tea).
the move: open → open-mid
Georgian: one · written "ე"
Your /a/ is the one in anne (mother).
the move: close-mid → open-mid
Georgian: two · written "ო"
Your /o/ is the one in okul (school).
the move: glottal → uvular
Georgian: hand · written "ხ"
Uvular — rougher than German ach.
Your /h/ is the one in hava (air / weather).
the move: plosive → fricative
Georgian: wine · written "ღ"
Voiced — like a French r but further forward; the partner of ხ.
Your /ɡ/ is the one in gol (goal).
the move: tap → trill
Georgian: milk · written "რ"
Trilled or tapped.
Your /ɾ/ is the one in araba (car).
the move: ejective
Georgian: bread · written "პ"
Ejective — no air from the lungs; close the glottis and pop.
Your /p/ is the one in pul (stamp).
the move: ejective
Georgian: lake · written "ტ"
Ejective.
Your /t/ is the one in tuz (salt).
the move: ejective
Georgian: man · written "კ"
Ejective.
Your /k/ is the one in kara (land / black).
Words you may say identically
Two or more Georgian sounds landing on one sound of yours. Until the ear separates them, the mouth cannot — which is what the ear trainer is for.
Genuinely new
Nothing in Turkish sits close to these. They sound foreign in your mouth — which is the good news: you can hear that you are not saying them yet.
coffee
Uvular ejective — made far back, a throaty pop. The hardest sound for learners; ბაყაყი 'frog' is the tongue-twister.
Closest thing you own: — but velar → uvular, ejective.
water
Ejective. წყალი opens with two ejectives in a row.
Closest thing you own: — but postalveolar → alveolar, ejective.
Rhythm and pitch
The layer spelling never records, and the one that makes a correct sentence still sound foreign.
| Turkish | Georgian | |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Syllable-timed, rising to the end | Syllable-timed, heavy clusters |
| Stress | Regular by default: the last syllable, and it travels rightwards as suffixes are added (kiTAP, kitapLAR, kitaplarDAN). The exceptions are what make it a real system. Place names are stressed early, on a pattern borrowed from their shape (ANkara, İsTANbul, İZmir); many adverbs and old loans stay on the first syllable (ŞIMdi, YArın, LOkanta); and some suffixes refuse the stress and push it onto the syllable before them — the negative -me-/-ma- above all, so that the same letters can be a noun or a command. | Weak and non-contrastive. Two-syllable words take it on the first syllable; longer words tend toward the third-from-last. No pair of Georgian words is distinguished by stress alone, which is why dictionaries do not mark it. To an English ear Georgian can sound evenly stressed, almost flat — that is correct, not a lack of expression. |
What you have that Georgian doesn't
15 sounds with no job in Georgian. They are not mistakes — but they are where an accent leaks in, because a sound you own is easy to use when a hard one is due.
The honest caveat
This is a prediction from the shape of two sound systems, not a recording of you. It says what your inventory makes likely — it cannot know that your Turkish has a regional variety that already owns one of these, or that you learned Georgian from someone whose accent you copied. A teacher listening to you beats it. Use it to know what to listen for.
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