There are approximately 5 million Georgian language speakers worldwide, with large groups in Russia, Iran, the United States, the European Union, Israel,[2] and northeastern Turkey.

It is written with an original and distinctive alphabet, and the oldest surviving literary text dates from the 5th century AD.

On the basis of glottochronological analysis, Georgi Klimov dates the split of the Proto-Kartvelian into Svan and Proto-Georgian-Zan (Proto-Karto-Zan) to the 19th century BC,[10][11] and the further division into Georgian and Zan to the 8th century BC,[11] although with the reservation that such dating is very preliminary and substantial further study is required.

[10] A 2023 study employing Bayesian linguistic phylogenetics in conjunction with archaeological, ethnoecological, and human population genetic data suggests a substantially earlier separation between Svan and the Karto-Zan languages.

[12] According to this study it is highly likely that Proto-Karto-Zan (i.e. Proto-Georgian-Zan) prior to its split into Georgian and Zan was spoken by pre-Kura-Araxes and Kura-Araxes farmers that thrived in the watershed of Mtkvari (Kura) River during the Copper and Bronze Ages.

Heavy borrowing in both directions (i.e. from North Caucasian to Kartvelian and vice versa) has been observed; therefore, it is likely that certain grammatical features have been influenced as well.

The Kartvelian languages have traces of grammatical gender based on animacy, classifying objects as intelligent ("who"-class) and unintelligent ("what"-class) beings.

Mingrelian, on the other hand, has extended the use of the ergative to all intransitive verbs, becoming fully accusative in all series, although with different case marking.