The Georgian language has its roots in the Caucasian language family. As far as scholars and linguists have been able to deduce, this language family has resided in the Caucasus mountain range and in the Kura river valley between the Greater and Lesser Caucasus for several millennia (Grozdetski, 1018). Unlike many other language families who have embarked on mass migrations, such as Indo-European or Altaic, the Caucasian family has remained relatively static in its place of residence on the earth. This evidence supports the theory that the previous two language families held onto their vitality because of conquest or migration. In contrast, The Caucasian languages have maintained their vitality because of its geographic isolation.
The languages indigenous to the Caucasus stem from a Proto-Caucasian language also referred to as Paleo-Caucasian (Chikobava, 5). From there, there is some controversy as to how this language evolved-but most scholars agree that its progenitors branched off into three main language groups: the Nakho-Dagestanian (Northeast Caucasian), Abkhazo-Adyghian (Northwest Caucasian) and Kartvelian (the South Caucasian) Language groups. It is from this latter group, the Kartvelian group, from which Georgian evolved. The major characteristics of this Katvelian Language group that distinguishes it from the other groups is that "(a) it possesses a reasonable proportion of consonants to vowels and (b) a comparative complexity within both nominal and verbal morphology" (Hewitt, 4).