Understanding Georgian personal pronouns is an essential first step when learning the language.

Personal pronouns replace nouns to show who’s speaking, who’s being spoken to, or who’s being talked about.

In English, these are words like I, you, he, she, and they.

Georgian pronouns are highly straightforward and have fewer rules than many European languages.

The language doesn’t use gendered pronouns at all.

You also don’t always need to use personal pronouns when speaking because the verb handles that job for you.

I’ll explain exactly how these pronouns work below.

The Georgian personal pronouns

Here’s a complete list of the basic personal pronouns in Georgian.

No gender in Georgian pronouns

Georgian is a completely gender-neutral language.

This means you don’t have to worry about memorizing different words for “he” and “she”.

The single pronoun is (ის) covers he, she, and it.

Sometimes you’ll also see the word igi (იგი) used in the exact same way.

Both is and igi are correct, but is is much more common in everyday spoken Georgian.

Formal and informal you

Like many other languages, Georgian has two ways to say “you”.

You must choose between shen (შენ) and tkven (თქვენ) depending on who you’re talking to.

Use shen when speaking to one person who’s a friend, family member, or a child.

This is the informal, singular version of “you”.

Use tkven when speaking to someone older than you, a stranger, or someone in a position of authority.

This is the polite, formal version of “you”.

You also use tkven whenever you’re addressing more than one person, regardless of how well you know them.

Dropping pronouns in conversation

Georgian is what linguists call a “pro-drop” language.

This means native speakers frequently drop personal pronouns from their sentences entirely.

In Georgian, the verb changes its form to tell you exactly who’s doing the action.

Because the verb gives away the subject, saying the pronoun out loud is often repetitive.

For example, the verb “to want” conjugated for “I want” is minda (მინდა).

You can say me minda (მე მინდა), but a native speaker will almost always just say minda.

You only need to include the personal pronoun when you want to emphasize who’s doing the action.

If someone asks who wants the last piece of cake, you’d use the pronoun to clarify that you want it.

Otherwise, dropping the pronouns will make your Georgian sound much more natural.