"evropuli qartia saqarTvelo "European Charter for Regional or ...

(Aliabatian) f, usually occurs in certain positions due to phonetic phenomena:
f- ĉam, f- ĉri, f-tli (Gr. Imnaishvili, 1963, p. 82).
Sound ¥ at the beginning of interjections and demonstrative pronouns
(before a vowel) could be encountered in all dialects. It is mainly
produced as a result of a vowel’s tense excursion and is not regarded as
a phoneme.
In Megrelian-Chan the sound ¥ generally represents a positional
variant of q: ¥uji "ear", ¥vali "cheese", etc.
Sound ¥ is typical of the Tushian dialect. In T. Uturgaidze’s view
the Sound ¥ must be distinguished as an independent phoneme since it
sometimes appears to have a function to distinguish between the meanings,
for instance: da¥ oy (a male personal name) da daoy (a female relative),
ħ i¥ oy (a male personal name) da ħioy (verb tearing up), The Optative
Screeve). 292
The above-mentioned sounds (except for ĥ) are secondary, positionally
produced ones. In this regard, the Megrelian-Laz and Svan
idioms, in fact, do not differ at all from the dialects of the Georgian language.
Dialectal variants of the common Kartvelian vowels (vowel
correspondences). In modern Kartvelian dialects the common Kartvelian
vowels generally remain invariable. Often, other variants (o, a) correspond
to a and e vowels in Megrelian-Chan.
Such vowel alternation is known as sound correspondence (the interrelationship
of sounds between the literary Georgian and the Svan dialects
is generally identical).
The following cases of vowel correspondences between the
common Kartvelian and the Megrelian-Chan are well-known:
common Kartvelian a > Megrelian-Chan o: ķoči "man", oši "a hundred",
do "sister", etc.
common Kartvelian e > Megrelian-Chan a: ma "I", dğa "a day", mapa "a
king", etc.
Similar cases sporadically occur in other dialects as well, namely:
292 On sound ¥ see: I. Qipshidze, 1914; Arn. Chikobava, 1936; S. Zhghenti, 1953; T.
Uturgaidze, 1960; Gr. Imnaishvili, 1963; N. Kiziria, 1980; N. Imnadze, 1981; B. Jorbenadze,
1998; N. Kutelia, 2005, etc.
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