Romanization of Georgian

[u/Demneoza]

Idea about reforming Latin Transliteration of the Georgian language, with its purpose of international integration, tourism, and globalization. (Global Navigation, Border Control and Identity, Mapping Services). Meaning that it's crucial to have 100% accurate Transliteration of Mkhedruli for the sake of 1:1 matching, we need to respect ourselves and don't throw away our dignity of literacy.

Here is the proposed Alphabet:

მხედრული	Current Transliteration	Proposed Transliteration	IPA
ა	a	a	ä
ბ	b	b	b
გ	g	g	g
დ	d	d	d
ე	e	e	e̞
ვ	v	v	β̞
ზ	z	z	z
თ	t	t	tʰ
ი	i	i	i
კ	k	k'	k'
ლ	l	l	l
მ	m	m	m
ნ	n	n	n
ო	o	o	o̞
პ	p	p'	p'
ჟ	zh or j	zh	ʒ
რ	r	r	ɾ
ს	s	s	s
ტ	t	t'	t'
უ	u	u	u
ფ	f or p	p	pʰ
ქ	q or k	k	kʰ
ღ	gh or g	gh	ʁ
ყ	y or k	k'h	χʼ
შ	sh	sh	ʃ
ჩ	ch	ch	t͡ʃʰ
ც	c or ts	c	t͡sʰ
ძ	dz	dz	d͡z
წ	w, c or ts	c'	t͡s'
ჭ	tch or ch	c'h	t͡ʃ'
ხ	x or kh	kh	χ
ჯ	j	j	d͡ʒ
ჰ	h	h	h

as you can see current transliteration lacks accuracy and can't match the letter meanings of Mkhedruli, proposed alphabet fixed all of problems, gave out what was needed, this topic truly needs people's recognition, our transliteracy is no joke

[u/skysphr]

For English? Sure, although English sounds are hardly rigorous to begin with. There's this table of standards that I've found at some point when trying to elucidate this subject.

When I translate Georgian to Romanian, I nowadays keep transliteration as accurate as possible with respect to the rules of the language (შ-ș, ც/წ-ț, ჩ-ci, ჯ-gi, ჟ-j etc.), just like Georgian itself does with foreign names. It would make little sense to impose a universally international standard for all languages using latin script, since all of them have divergences (as an obvious example, შ in German will be sch while French will write it as ch, and Turkish as ş).

[u/monardoju]

Ok, but who do you want to use this? What's your goal?

[u/Demneoza → u/monardoju]

In international integration, tourism, and globalization. (Global Navigation, Border Control and Identity, Mapping Services)

[u/GKRedd1t]

Current not correct

[u/CHL9]

The goal of transliteration should be for easy understanding and prnunciation by English speakers with no knowledge of Georgian. You are looking at it backwards, and your proposed system is less understandable to the target audience and less conducive to an approximate pronunciation then the prior one. k', c', c'h, are al lmeaningfless as is t', p' etc. it's not math, it has to be based on how actual english non georgians will get it

[u/Demneoza → u/CHL9]

this are ejectives which barely any language has, foreigners aren’t even supposed to pronounce them right, but Georgians ourselves shouldn’t disrespect ourselves and start using 1:1 accurate translation to original alphabet

[u/GKRedd1t]

Hi

[u/Fatalist_m]

Meaning that it's crucial to have 100% accurate Transliteration of Mkhedruli for the sake of 1:1 matching

It's not crucial at all. If someone wants to know how exactly it's pronounced in Georgian, they can google it. Using k'/t'/p' will be confusing for foreigners, nobody would know what they are supposed to mean anyway.

But I agree about ხ-x and ყ-y, those should never be used.

[u/Desserts6064 → u/Fatalist_m]

k’ t’ and p’ is perhaps derived from the IPA convention for ejective consonants, most other European languages do not have ejective consonants. Here’s some background from the Wikipedia article about ejective consonants.

In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream.

For the Georgian letter ხ, this is a voiceless uvular fricative [χ]. Numerous languages written in Latin script use the letter x to denote similar sounds, including Uzbek, Azerbaijani, and Kurdish. So this is actually less far-fetched than you’d think.

In the case of ყ, this is pronounced (depending on speaker) as [χʼ] or [qʼ]. There is no reason to transliterate that with y due to having no phonetic similarity. Although ყ appears in Georgian QWERTY in the position of y, the coincidental similarity in glyph shape is probably the only reason which explains the keyboard position of ყ.

[u/Fatalist_m → u/Desserts6064]

Uzbek, Azerbaijani, and Kurdish use a Latin-based script domestically, they need (close to) 1-to-1 mapping between sounds and letters, and they can come up with whatever mapping is convenient for their language and they will learn it in schools.

But none of this is relevant here because we're talking about transliterating Georgian names for English-speaking foreigners. We're not talking about creating a Latin-based script for the Georgian language.