Linguistic-Ethnographic Materials from the Mountainous Region of Eastern Georgia: Khevsureti

Abstract

Vakhushti Bagrationi, in his Geography of Georgia, notes that Khevsureti is a country „exceedingly fortified by mountain, cliff, and forest, for which reason its people live in peace and submit to whoever holds Tianeti, since they grow up from that quarter“.
The mountain dialects of Eastern Georgia – Mokheuri, Khevsurian, Mtiuli-Gudamaqruli, and Tushian – remain of interest today, both linguistically and ethnographically. A great deal of material is still preserved in these dialects, material that requires further identification and study. Dialectal material today constitutes
one of the significant sources that no researcher – whether historian, philologist, or ethnographer – can afford to bypass.
One important source on the Khevsurian dialect is the collected notes of the researcher Givi Dolidze, published by Tbilisi State University in 1975. The texts were recorded in various communities of Khevsureti: Piraketi Khevsureti, the community of Shatili, and the community of Arkhoti. The texts are of various kinds: narrative accounts, legends, folktales, historical matters, adventures, verses, battles with neighboring regions, and others.
The texts preserve the sound khari (ĥ) – retained from Old Georgian and from the mountain dialects – which remains active/in use today. It occurs at the beginning, middle, and end of a word, and in some words alongside the sound kh (ħ as in khani).
The texts also contain a short [vowel/sound], which is preserved in the speech of nearly every village.
Long vowels are attested as well, along with a whole series of other linguistic and dialectological phenomena.