I want to eat khachapuri – could there be a more typical answer to the question of what we will eat in Georgia? Well, maybe apart from khinkali. So let’s learn how to build such a sentence correctly.
If you want to say in Georgian that you want to do something, for example “I want to eat khachapuri”, then a verb form that does not exist in English is useful, i.e. the so-called optative. In Georgian it is called მეორე კავშირებითი.
You will use this form when you want to say in Georgian that you want, need, must or intend to do something. There are other situations where the optative is used, but we’ll cover those in the next part of this series.
But let’s start with some good news if your Georgian is not that advanced yet. Well, in some situations, a sentence like “I want to eat khachapuri” can be constructed in a simpler way. But only if you know verbs infinitiv forms. That’s why we always say in our articles and in the Georgian courses we run for you that it is definitely worth learning infinitives.
Therefore, we can say such a sentence in the form: ჭამა მინდა (ch’ama minda) – I want to eat. What’s worth remembering is that the word eat becomes a noun here, so what you want to eat must be in the 4th Georgian case. If you don’t know the basic Georgian cases, in our “Let’s study Georgian” course and tutorial we guide you through them with the most useful phrases and, of course, exercises.
I want to eat khachapuri – how do you say it in Georgian?
Let’s leave the infinitive for now, because this form seems much simpler. Let’s move on to our optative.
It is easiest to learn the optative form if you already know the past perfect tense, because we form optative directly from this form in Georgian. Let’s look at it using the example of the verb to eat – შეჭმა (shech’ma).
მე შევჭამე – I ate (me shevch’ame)
მე შევჭამო – me shevchamo
I purposely do not translate this form, because in English it may sound different depending on how the optative form is used – a form of the tense, which we do not have in English.
Therefore, the entire sentence I want to eat khachapuri in Georgian will be:
მე მინდა შევჭამო ხაჭაპური – me minda shevch’amo khachapuri
Note that the word khachapuri is in the first case, in line with the conjugated cases of the ‘to want’ verb .
If you want to learn more about the conjugation of popular Georgian verbs also in optative, see our book “50 Georgian verbs”. There you will find the conjugation of 50 popular Georgian verbs from the present tense to the optative tense, which is what you need to communicate fluently in Georgian.
How to say I want to buy in Georgian?
Let’s look at the ‘to buy’ vrb, which we often use when shopping. How to tell someone that you want to buy Georgian spices or buy Georgian home-made wine?
Here we have exactly the same principle. You need the verb “I want” and add the ‘buy’ word to it in the optative form.
მე ვიყიდე – I bought/I bought (me vikhide)
მე მინდა ვიყიდო – I want to buy (me minda vikhido)
How to say you want to eat khachapuri instead of I want to eat khachapuri?
So let’s look at the variety for all people, because maybe more people will want to eat Georgian khachapuri. So the full form will be:
მე მინდა შევჭამო
შენ გინდა შეჭამო
მას უნდა შეჭამოს
ჩვენ გვინდა შევჭამოთ
თქვენ გინდათ შეჭამოთ
მათ უნდათ შეჭამონ.
If you want to know more about not only Georgian, but also what to eat in Georgia, you may check our episode of the Caucasus podcast about being vgetarian and vegan in Georgia.