German to Georgian: finding the owner, experiencer and words hidden in endings
German ich can become an experiencer construction
A German sentence such as Ich will or Ich habe makes ich the grammatical starting point. Georgian teaching groups several common expressions of wanting, possession and feeling as inversive verbs: the experiencer or owner is marked differently from the agent of an ordinary action. The course gives მე მაქვს, me makvs, for possession, and მე მინდა, me minda, for wanting. Recognizing the same person does not mean expecting the same grammatical pattern as German.
For a friend, its example is მე მყავს მეგობარი, me mqavs megobari. The distinction between possession expressions matters because German haben alone does not tell a reader which Georgian construction to expect. These are attested teaching examples rather than an invitation to replace makvs with mqavs indiscriminately. Read the possessed entity together with the verb; a different target verb need not mean the German owner has changed.
A German accusative is not a Georgian accusative
German readers may use the contrast between der Mann and den Mann to identify subject and object. The Georgian course explicitly explains that Georgian has no accusative case. Objects and subjects are distributed across other cases according to the verb form. A target noun therefore cannot be evaluated by searching for a case bearing the same name as the German source case.
Even recognizing the dictionary headword requires care. The course separates nominative kac-i from the stem kac-, then illustrates forms including kac-ma and kac-s. This differs from treating the entire isolated headword as an unchanging base to which every ending is added. For a German reader consulting a glossary beside a translation, these related forms can identify the same noun despite their different final letters.
Several German words may appear inside one Georgian word
The Georgian Universal Dependencies documentation gives სახლში, saxlshi, for in the house, with the location element attached to the noun. German distributes comparable information over the preposition in, the article and the noun. A shorter Georgian word count can thus reflect ordinary grammar rather than an omitted location. Do not insert spaces within the target form to match the German word boundaries.
The same documentation illustrates სახლია, saxlia, meaning is a house: the copular element is attached. This is a separate reason why a German form of sein may lack a freestanding counterpart. A word-by-word inspection that demands one visible Georgian word for every German auxiliary, article and noun can incorrectly diagnose a complete sentence as incomplete.
Dictionary verbs may not look like German infinitives
German dictionaries normally list an infinitive such as schreiben. Georgian lacks that kind of infinitive; its dictionaries may instead use a verbal noun, an abstract root or a finite third-person form. Establish the entry convention before concluding that a translated Georgian verb is missing. Two references may organize the same verbal material differently.
Language references