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

English, Georgian and Russian on behalf of the "European Centre for
Minority Issues" 246
.
The famous expert Jonathan Wheatley includes 29 languages in
the table – "Regional and Minority Languages in Georgia" (pp. 10-12).
In his view, the majority of these languages must be protected in Georgia
in accordance with the "European Charter for Regional or Minority
Languages".
Jonathan Wheatley is careful about the issue of the Kartvelian
idioms’ status, though he believes that due to the lack of understandability
Megrelian, Laz and Svan could be regarded as languages (17). Considering
that, it is interesting why they do not suggest the German government
to recognize Mecklenburgian and Bavarian languages? Besides,
it has been repeatedly claimed that understandability is not a criterion
for distinguishing between a language and a dialect, as almost
every language in the world has dialects that is impossible to understand
(or is difficult for an expert in a literary language) and vice versa: there
are many languages that are understandable to the speakers of the related
languages.
Clearly, taking into account the literary tradition is rather signifi-
247
cant while distinguishing between a language and a dialect . Thus, unlike
Bavarian language, the German government considered Low German
as a regional language due to the fact that Low German has developed
a literary tradition since the 16 th
century. In addition, Low German
and High German are parallel language "systems" resulted from the
common German language while Megrelian-Laz or Svan dialects are
secondary varieties – sub-systems of Georgian/Kartvelian language system
(see below).
246
http://www.ecmi.de European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI):
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?ots591=0C54E3B3-
1E9C-BE1E-2C24-A6A8C7060233&lng=en&id=102089
http://www.ecmi.de/download/working_paper_44_rus.pdf
Jonathan Wheatley, "Georgia and the European Charter for Regional or Minority
Languages";working paper ECMI № 42, June, 2009; for criticism see: T. Putkaradze,
“European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages” and Georgia”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23745708/Putkaradze-Jonathan-Wheatley-s-Kritika.
247 T. Putkaradze, The Georgians, Part I, Kutaisi, 2005.
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