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

cluded in school textbooks as a tool for enriching the Georgian literary
language; also, the Georgian school students must be given an opportunity
to get acquainted generally with the folklore according to particular
Georgian dialects;
• The state must adequately finance the Centers for Kartvelological
research that carry out research and teach the Kartvelian dialects; the
lexical or grammar peculiarities of the extant dialects must be extensively
recorded; new dialectal vocabularies and folklore-ethnographic materials
must be prepared and published 380
;
• Historically the Georgian literary language was supplied by all
Kartvelian dialects; therefore, from the very beginning it would be logical
to include Megrelian-Laz and Svan lexicon into the basic dictionary
of the literary language (the Georgian dictionary in 8 volumes). At least
today it is essential to prepare a new edition of the Georgian dictionary
which will be comprised of not only the Kartlian or Pshav-Khevsurian
381
but also the Megrelian-Laz and Svan lexis . For the purpose of implementation
of such activities a scientific-educational center was established
at the Kartvelology Research Institute of Akaki Tsereteli State
380 Unfortunately, in recent years financial support for dialectological expeditions and
non-politicized Kartvelological research has dramatically decreased. In 2006-2009 the
Kartvelological centres established in regions of Georgia were mostly affected due to
the incorrect and clannish granting politics of Rustaveli (Kartvelology) Foundation affiliated
to the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia (so-called centralized system
of financing; inadequate elaboration of priorities in Kartvelology carried out by foreign
(for instance, Artur Tsutsiev) and amateur, “incognito” experts, selection of projects
in Kartvelology as well as other field of Humanities on the basis of common rating).
In addition, in 2005 more than 1200 scientific theses were finances more or less
normally. Since 2006 the number of Kartvelological projects financed by the Ministry
has decreased up to few projects per year; for instance, based on the decisions by
anonymous experts in 2007-2010, grants of the “Katrtvelological foundation” was offered
to the projects as follows: “Research on Sexual Behaviour in Georgia”, “Akira
Kurosawa’s World of Cinema”, “De-paraffinization of petroleum with the help of the
natural resource - clinoptilolite and minimization of concentration of hazardous substances
in exhausts“, “Computer teaching methodics of cardiomyopathy types, inflammatory
heart diseases and their complications”, etc. while the highly rated project were
rejected, those aiming at analyzing Kartvelological (linguistic and literary) materials
preserved at the Georgian priory in Istanbul and creation of database for the data of endangered
Taoan, Imerkhevian, Livanan and other Kartvelian dialects, etc.
381 This is dealt with by the linguistic conception by K. Gamsakhurdia; The similar suggestion
is offered by Ilia II the Catholicos-Patriarch of Georgia (for discussion see: E.
Dadiani, 2007, p. 244; T. Putkaradze, 2008, p. 39).
318