A presentation of a new Georgian-Russian dictionary was held at the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University on
October 22. TSU Rector, Academician Vladimer Papava, linguists, TSU students, professors and invited guests attended the event.
TSU Rector Vladimer Papava said: “The Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics worthily continues the traditions and this is confirmed by a new Georgian-Russian dictionary. This dictionary is the work done by generations and it will become a desk book. The dictionary is extremely important especially for the youth. Generally, dictionary publishing is always important as it helps our citizens get more information in a foreign language. Hence, creation of such dictionaries is always important and I am proud that similar dictionary has been created at the TSU Institute of Linguistics.”
“The Georgian-Russian dictionary is the first academic publication in Georgia; it is considered a very serious work for several reasons: first reason is its volume; it contains over 58 000 words and is the largest Georgian-Russian dictionary ever published before. The second reason – the Institute of Linguistics has created the dictionary, which is normative from all points of views – both in terms of the Georgian literary language and the Russian literary language. It means that the equivalence of standard forms is observed; respectively, it is a highly reliable dictionary. Third, any dictionary, in itself, is always very important in modern world; it is connected not only to learning the languages, but also to familiarizing oneself with various cultures. Hence, the work launched by the Institute of Linguistics in the seventies of the 20th century has been finalized and today the society can view its printed version. We suppose to create an electronic version of this dictionary in future and generally, a very serious foundation has been laid for creating similar bilingual dictionaries,” Director of the Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics, Lali Ezugbaia said.
The new Georgian-Russian dictionary is the largest one ever published before and contains 58 500 words. The issue of creation of a new Georgian-Russian dictionary first arose at the Institute of Linguistics in the mid seventies of the 20th century. An editorial group was set up that compiled a vocabulary and developed the instruction for its creation.
The preparation works over publishing a dictionary resumed several years ago. Because of certain historical changes it became necessary to thoroughly revise the vocabulary – either to remove or to significantly correct communist-old vocabulary. On the other hand, new (mainly foreign-derived) words had been intruded in the language which also needed to have been reflected in the dictionary.
The key goal of the editorial group was to provide its readers with exact Russian equivalents of modern Georgian literary language vocabulary. The dictionary is philological: it does not contain proper names (persons, geographical, etc.); special terms established in the fields of science, art, technology; ancient, provincial words and slangs, as well as blameworthy and obscene expressions.
The dictionary was technically prepared at the Institute of Linguistics; cover design was prepared at the TSU publishing house. The dictionary consists of 772 pages.
