The number of people who, when they hear the name 'Georgia,' think immediately of a state in the USA whose capital is Atlanta is decreasing fast. And those who know that Georgia (capital Tbilisi) is a small but vibrant country in the Caucasus, with a fantastic climate, an unequalled reputation for hospitality and wine-growing, and the world's youngest President Mikheil Saakashvili are fast becoming the majority!

The Georgian language belongs to the Kartvelian group of Iberian-Caucasian languages. It is one of the oldest of the living languages. The Assyrian manuscript "A book of peoples and countries", written in the fifth century, contains a note that of 73 peoples then known only 14 had a written language. Among these Georgians are mentioned (Latin, Slavic-Cyrillic, Arabian, Indian, Chines, Japanese, Korean, Ethiopian, Greek, Georgian, Armenian, Jewish, Mongolian and Syrian). The Georgians have their alphabet, the number of letters being the same of sounds, thus spelling and pronunciation are identical. Handwriting and printing are similar. This makes Georgian orthography one of the simplest and most perfect in the world. The Georgian written language was created under the king Parnavaz (III century AD).