Tusheti, the northeastern mountainous region of Georgia, is home to four tribes that consider themselves Tushetians: the Batsbi (also known as Tsovatush), the Gometsari, the Piriqiti, and the Chagma-Tush.

Only several hundred Tsovatush people speak Bats, whereas the other tribes (Gometsari, Piriqiti and Chagma-Tush) have lost the language.

The mountainous terrain preserved the culture and traditions of Tushetians, but the history of isolation makes it more difficult to document them as only a few records exist.

[4] All vowels and diphthongs have nasalised allophones that are the result of phonetic and morphophonemic processes: [ ĩ ẽ ã õ ũ ].

Batsbi has a large consonant inventory, relatively typical for a Nakh-Dagestanian language, containing ejectives, pharyngeals and uvulars.

Unlike its close Nakh relatives, Chechen and Ingush, Batsbi has on the other hand retained the voiceless lateral fricative /ɬ/.

Batsbi is an SOV language with ergative-absolutive alignment which makes extensive use of bound morphological derivation and inflection.

[7] Exclusive Inclusive so ħo ve/vai txo šu as aħ ve atx eš sẽ ħẽ vaĩ txõ šũ son ħon vain txon šun sogu ħogu vaigu txogu šugu soǧ ħoǧ vaiǧ txoǧ šuǧ In Batsbi, the distal demonstrative ('that yonder') also serves as a third person pronoun ('s/he', 'it', 'they').

o obi oqus oqar oquĩ oqrĩ oquin oqarn oquv e is o eq icx oq Adnominal demonstratives code no gender in Batsbi.

ეeDEM.proximalფსტუიჩოვpstʼuinčovwoman-ERGე ფსტუიჩოვe pstʼuinčovDEM.proximal woman-ERG"This woman"ეeDEM.proximalსტაკოვstʼakʼovman-ERGე სტაკოვe stʼakʼovDEM.proximal man-ERG"This manოoDEM.distalსტაკოვstʼakʼovman-ERGო სტაკოვo stʼakʼovDEM.distal man-ERG"That man over there"mẽ vux macã meɬ mič, miča menux ħã st'ev menxuičov As in other Nakh languages, Batsbi has several noun classes (grammatical genders) that are indexed through class prefixes on some vowel-initial verbs, adjectives, numerals, and a few other words.

"Father sister took") nanas bader d-ik'ẽ dadas pħu b-ik'ẽ Holisky and Gagua (1994) analyse Batsbi as having five noun classes,[6] whereas Alice Harris posits that Batsbi has eight genders in total, based on the behaviour of words that fail to conform to the patterns of the five major classes.

These includes the words for "teacher" (უჩიტელ učitʼel), "friend" (ნაყბისტ naq'bist'), "enemy" (მასთხოვ mastxov), "neighbor" (მეზობელ mezobel) and others.

sag sag-i niq' niq'-iš xẽ xen-bi dok' dak'-mi pḥu pḥ-arč tʼʕir tʼʕir-erč kʼeč̣ kʼač̣-ar jopʼqʼ apʼqʼ-er Batsbi makes use of nine noun cases total.

In Bats, as in its closest relatives Chechen and Ingush, the number four (Dʕivʔ) begins with a noun-class marker, represented by D (by default, or another capital letter for the other classes).