Institute of Linguistics building in a critical condition

Three Georgian alphabets were added to the list of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016. The Georgian word for "alphabet" is ანბანი (anbani), after the names of the first two letters of the Georgian alphabets. All three of them coexist today, while wide society uses Mkhedruli, the Orthodox Church of Georgia utilizes both Nuskhuri and Mrgvlovani alphabets, they are also used and researched by scholars, historians, and linguists.

The main institution dedicated to researching the Georgian language is the Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics. Regrettably, the building that they are situated in is in a dire condition.

“The knowledge and experience of the previous generation are transferred to the next generation through the language. Otherwise, the development of the culture would be impossible” wrote Chikobava, whose name the Institute proudly carries today.

Born in a small village of Sachikobavo in 1898, Arnold Chikobava was one of the firsts to bring Georgian linguistics to the international arena. He was one of the first members of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences and remained a pillar of the academy for over 45 years.

Chikobava penned more than fifteen monographs, and about five hundred research papers concerning the structure and vocabulary of old and new Georgian. He was heavily involved in the work of unifying of the Georgian literary language norms and processing the Georgian scientific terminology. Arnold Chikobava's contribution to studying the Georgian language, Kartvelian languages and dialects are immense.

With the specialists trained by him and under the guidance and editorship of Chikobava, the eight-volume monumental Georgian Language Explanatory Dictionary was compiled. The creation of such dictionaries is oftentimes perceived as a historical phenomenon in every nation's life and viable for the survival of the language itself.

He was an initiator of establishing the Department of Caucasian Languages at the Tbilisi State University in 1933-34 academic year. It was the only department of this field in the country. Abkhazians and Ossetians, as well as students from Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Adyghe, the Chechen Ingush Republic, and Karachay-Cherkessia studied at the Georgian and Russian sectors of this department alongside Georgians. This contributed to increasing collaboration between the peoples of Transcaucasia.

The Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics, located in the heart of Tbilisi in a historical building on Ingorokva street, has been serving as a hub of linguistic research for almost 80 years.

The main goal of the Institute is to study Georgian from the normative and historical viewpoints. They research the problems of phonetics, grammatical structure, syntax, vocabulary and dialectology of other Kartvelian (Megrelian-Chan, Svan) and Ibero-Caucasian (Abkhaz-Adyghe, Nakh, Daghestanian) languages in synchronic and diachronic aspect, also a connection of these languages with other ones from the typological viewpoint.

Institute of Linguistics is the only scientific institution, where more than 30 languages (among them 15 are written languages) of the Ibero-Caucasian (Paleo-Caucasian) family are researched. Results of research are published in the form of monographs and in scientific collections.

Not only the scholars at the Institute study different Caucasian languages, but they are in the heart of the Georgian language, working hard to adapt it to the challenges the ever-changing world creates.

Georgia became an independent country created the necessity of creation of corresponding terminology and standards in the official sphere. The institute carries out systematic work on normalization and unification of Georgian scientific-technical terminology. In the era of rapid scientific development, an important task of the institute is to find and introduce the semantically exact, formatively pliable terms suited for the nature of the language.

It is important for languages to keep modernizing and adapting to the new advancements in the world. The experience of the Institute creates an environment where the Georgian language can thrive and develop.

Unfortunately, the Institute operates in a building that is on the brink of collapse. There have been promises from the previous government of relocating Institute to a safer building, but the promises proved to be futile.

The director of the institute, Nana Machavariani, said that the Institute is working closely with the Government of Georgia and the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia on various issues, including that of the Institute’s building.

“The Institute is a hub of science and linguistics research and is situated in a building that poses a threat to the well-being of the staff and researchers. We have received many promises from the government and are in a process of waiting for a solution to the problem” said Machavariani.

The walls of the building are cracked open, creating a haunting vision that is hard to believe comes from a modern-day research institution. For years, the lack of attention from the officials has only worsened the situation of the building. Scholars dedicated to the study of languages show up at work every day uncertain if they will be able to walk out of the building safely.

Despite such an enormous problem, the Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics continues their crucial work to make sure that the Georgian language is studied and preserved for future generations.