[Eric]

Thanks, Stewart. I had a stab at learning it yesterday, mostly when sitting outside the pub. The Belgian Westmalle Tripel beer stimulates the brain - up to a point.

I've got the hang of most of the letters by now, but with that doubling of "k"s and "t"s, it's still a pretty confusing business. Glad they got rid of a few - fewer to learn.

I think it's the ones with the apostrophe after them in the transliteration that are those funny ones with the simultaneous glottal stop. The one for a "ts" sound looks like an ice-cream cornet to me. Those curly letters remind you of the alphabet Tolkien invented in Lord of the Rings.

What they do that is odd is stack up a whole load of consonants at the beginning of a word, ones we wouldn't think of shoving together. You can already see that in the name "Mkhedruli" and "Tskhinvali". Today is "dghes", with the "gh" representing something resembling a French "r" sound. And of course "Tbilisi", the spelling of which the media are having nightmares with. Used to be called "Tiflis", but that rhymes with "syph'lis".

I actually managed to read the word "Gori" on TV in their alphabet.