From Pushkin’s to Shakespeare’s language

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has promulgated an English language study program for the upcoming generation. According to Saakashvili, thousands of teachers will come from English-speaking countries in the summer. These teachers will be placed in jobs in all secondary schools. They will teach young Georgians English from first grade on, not just from the fifth grade, as it has been until nowadays. The Georgian government will allocate considerable language allowances and bonuses for communication with pupils in English to all Georgian teachers.

During the conference, Saakashvili demonstrated a children's laptop, ordered from an eastern country specially for this occasion. "This laptop looks like a toy, but it doesn’t sink in the water and is shock-proof. We shall distribute it for free to all children, so that their parents will no longer have to buy expensive textbooks, because all the necessary data will be stored in the computer’s memory," Saakashvili said, and let the small colorful laptop fall to the table. Then he showed that this wonder of technology, invented in the U.S. and assembled in Malaysia, was still working.

The attempt to replace textbooks with laptops is a rather daring experiment. It is unlikely that the computer could replace the book. However, it is an interesting fact that the operating systems installed on these computers work exclusively in English. That is, the initiative conforms with the authorities’ policy of replacing Russian with English in all spheres of social life.

Georgian TV broadcasters haven’t broadcast American films dubbed into Russian for a long time. Films are allowed to be dubbed solely into Georgian. Films shot in Russia are allowed to be shown with Georgian subtitles only. And now Saakashvili has ordered a law be drafted, according to which broadcasters must demonstrate English-language films in the original language with subtitles in Georgian, so that the young generation can learn English faster.

Saakashvili is fluent in English. But if the new program is aimed at making this language the nation’s lingua franca and replacing Russian (which has been a lingua franca for Georgia for several centuries), it will require many years and huge investment. However, the Georgian authorities have already proved that they spare no resources in order to achieve “historic aims”.

What was the power of the Russian language in Georgia, why do millions of Georgians still know this language, whereas English is considered an exotic language in this country? Pushkin’s language has been the only means of getting to know not only Russian culture, but also world cultural heritage: the childhood favorite heroes of Dumas’ novel “The Three Musketeers” spoke Russian, as well as the characters of "The Magnificent Seven”. However, this tradition is not accepted by Georgia’s revolutionaries. One of the current authorities’ ideologists, writer Lasha Bugadze, recently said that she thinks of Pushkin "with great respect and love," but she thinks of Cervantes with no less respect. "But we read "Don Quixote" in translation, so what?" That is, why not read Pushkin in translation too? For example, in English translation, if almost no one knows Spanish in Georgia except for a small group of experts?

However, here the question arises: "What for?" The point is not that, as a philologist joked, "reading in translation is the same as smelling a rose through a gas mask. The main point is the "second language" function, i.e. its function as the language of communication, a function which has been performed by Russian for several centuries in Georgia. No one doubts the beauty, wealth, grandeur and might of the English language, but why break the existing order of things that society already has? Participants in this "cohort" of New Georgia’s builders say that communist ideology (and the Russian language employed by it) "impeded perception of world civilization." Nevertheless, several generations of Georgians have become acquainted with world culture by means of the Russian language. Many works remained untranslated for ideological reasons during the Soviet period. In Tbilisi in 1980, students read "The Godfather" by Mario Puzo typewritten in Russian, although this novel was unlikely to have achieved wide recognition without the great film by Coppola of the same name. However, Goethe's Faust could be bought in any bookshop for 80 kopecks at the time. The splendid magazine "Foreign Literature" published almost all new books, even those divergent or absolute anathema to the teachings of Marxism-Leninism.

Somehow or other even President Saakashvili himself noticed that, according to recent polls, the majority of Georgian citizens are disposed conservatively and unwelcoming to innovations, including those in the sphere of language. Saakashvili also said that he "feels uneasy about it". The president promised that the Georgian government is ready to give laptops to children living in the "occupied territories" as well.

George Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Especially for VK