Lesson 4 – თ, ქ, ფ
Before going further, we need to talk about phonetics, more precisely about aspiration. Put your hand in front of your mouth and say “pin”, and then say “spin”. The p in “pin” is followed by a puff of air, as if the p was followed by a h, but the p in “spin” is not. This phenomenon is called aspiration (if you want to know more, see Wikipedia). The distinction is not important in English, but it is in Georgian. The three letters we are going to learn in this lesson represent aspirated sounds, that is sounds followed by a puff of air.
თ (t)
This is an aspirated t.
ქ (k)
This is an aspirated k.
ფ (p)
This is an aspirated p. The f sound does not exist in Georgian, so when transcribing a foreign word with an f, ფ is used instead.
Exercises
You can now decipher the names of some cities and regions in Georgia.
Here are some more Georgian words. Hint: many country names end in -ეთი.
Hour
City
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