It may not always end with ის or ისა, either

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2006/04/09 03:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2006/04/09/571628.aspx

In the spirit of It may not always end with ի, I thought I would post another example, and though I cannot speak too much more intelligently about Georgian than I can Armenian, it will prove to be as hard of a case to research without that knowledge....

Georgian is a language that also has a suffix that is used for its genitive case (particularly in traditional literature), and there are two different suffixes, either of which may be used:

• ისა -- IN SAN AN (10d8 10e1 10d0)
• ის  -- IN SAN (10d8 10e1)

Like Armenian, the Georgian month names in Windows does not use the genitive case in it's data. Let's look at the data that is there without us trying to be fancy and adding any suffixes: 

Now, just looking at how all of the month names end in a vowel makes me a little nervous about trying to blindly tack either a 'ის' or a 'ისა' to the end of them, but let's take the naive approach and search for them, prior to this post going live and muddying up the waters....

Tentative Genitive Month Name	# of hits
იანვარიის/იანვარიისა	0/0
თებერვალიის/თებერვალიისა	0/0
მარტიის/მარტიისა	2/0
აპრილიის/აპრილიისა	0/0
მაისიის/მაისიისა	0/0
ივნისიის/ივნისიისა	0/0
ივლისიის/ივლისიისა	0/0
აგვისტოის/აგვისტოისა	0/0
სექტემბერიის/სექტემბერიისა	0/0
ოქტომბერიის/ოქტომბერიისა	0/0
ნოემბერიის/ნოემბერიისა	0/0
დეკემბერიის/დეკემბერიისა	0/0

This would seem to indicate one of several possibilities:

• There is very little Georgian text on the internet (disproven by looking for the regular month names without the suffixes I tried to add);
• Search engines can't handle Georgian text (disproven the same way);
• There is some type of exception to the suffix rule that takes place here;
• Georgian month names never take the genitive form.

Okay, let's look at these least two choices and try to see if it can be established which one is correct.

Putting two vowels together is in some languages consider illegal/uncommon, in others it extends the sound, and for still others it actually creates a whole new vowel sound.

Let's see if there is something to that illegal/uncommon theory, and try just removing the duplicate vowel to see how common the results are:

 

Tentative Genitive Month Name	# of hits
იანვარის/იანვარისა	131/2
თებერვალის/თებერვალისა	131/2
მარტის/მარტისა	90,700/91
აპრილის/აპრილისა	19,000/92
მაისის/მაისისა	14,600/91
ივნისის/ივნისისა	17,900/71
ივლისის/ივლისისა	9,320/67
აგვისტოს/აგვისტის/აგვისტოსა/აგვისტისა	24,800/4/50/0
სექტემბერის/სექტემბერისა	113/3
ოქტომბერის/ოქტომბერისა	97/0
ნოემბერის/ნოემბერისა	40/4
დეკემბერის/დეკემბერისა	55/3

A spot check of some of those ones with higher search hits does seem to be showing full date strings, of the type that would usually be used for genitive dates -- which I think is enough to prove that there is (or at the very least used to be) a usage involving a genitive case for month names in Georgian.

Though obviously the rules for handling the exception is not as easily handled as my "remove the duplicate vowel" test.

Perhaps the "exceptions" in these cases are to use same word as the nomintive form (in many modern contexts this is done with all month names, so it would be easy to imagine this being the case). Something similar happens with Czech, where Setember is září in both nominative and genitive case, even though the other month names vary with an "-en" ending becoming "-na".

If any native or knowledgable Georgian informants wanted to comment on my (somewhat sketchy) logic, that would be fine. If not, I'll probably be digging into this one too, eventually -- maybe starting here and/or here. Learning details about a language is an interesting and satisfying activity for its own sake. :-)

This post brought to you by "ი" (U+10d8, a.k.a. GEORGIAN LETTER IN)

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