Georgian is a language of the Kartvelian (South Caucasian) language family; this family appears to be unrelated to North East Caucasian and North West Caucasian language families. Georgian is spoken by some five million speakers in the Republic of Georgia, formerly part of the USSR, but now independent. The notion ‘word’ (Georgian sit’q’va ) is very much recognised in Georgian culture. The society is deeply literary, with the Georgian alphabet having been invented in the fourth or fifth century AD, and with texts dating from that time. Georgians have strong intuitions about what is a word, and this corresponds to orthographic practice, with few exceptions.