Caucasian Studies

Laz lexical data from English-Laz (19th c.) and Laz-English (21st c.) lexicographic sources

Zaal Kikvidze
International Black Sea University, Georgia
Levan Pachulia
Sukhumi State University, Georgia

  The paper presents a systematic discussion of the Laz lexical data extracted from the three English-Laz and Laz-English lexicographic sources published in the late 19th and early 21st centuries: 1. Peacock, D. R. 1887. Original Vocabularies of Five West Caucasian Languages. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 19/1: 145-156; 2. Amse-de Jong, T. H. 2004. Laz-English Dictionary. Feudenstadt: Kaukasus-Verlag; 3. Kurdadze, R., Shonia, D., Tandilava, L., Nizharadze, L. 2015. Georgian-Megrelian-Laz-Svan-English Dictionary. Tbilisi: Petiti, 2015.
  Lexical items and their translations from the aforementioned sources are compared taking D. R. Peacock’s dataset as a point of departure.
  The present paper is part of a series of our joint publications on the history of English-Caucasian lexicography mostly based on D. R. Peacock’s and G. Ellis’s lexicographic collections.

The article, based on archival materials extracted from the funds of the Central Historical Archive of Georgia, published documents and literature, highlights the formation of professional archiving in the Caucasus in the second half of the 19th century. The authors of the article focus on the history of creation and the first active years of the Caucasian Archaeographic Commission. This plot of historiography as well as the history of archival affairs in this region is still under-studied as a whole. Much attention is paid to the state of the archives of the Caucasus in the middle of the XIX century, the years preceding the creation of the archaeographic commission. Using unpublished materials, the authors reconstruct the daily work of commission’s members. The activity of the chairman Adolf Petrovich Berzhe is briefly considered. Some attention is paid to reviews of the commission’s publications, both critical and positive. The authors briefly describe the commission work in preparing the final (unreleased) volume of “Acts collected by the Caucasian Archaeographic Commission”.

Introduction

Chukar partridge is the ‘Native Caucasus Mountain’s Bird’

'In some Christian movements, particularly in Evangelicalism, to be born again is a popular phrase referring to "spiritual rebirth", or a regeneration of the human spirit from the Holy Spirit, contrasted with physical birth.'

Indeed, The Kurdish people revolution started by the Kurdish leader 'Abdulla Ocalan' is led to the rebirth of the Kurdish Nation. Ocalan builds the foundation for Kurdish people to have an organization to support defensive forces based on 'Zagros Mountain Range' from the Black Sea to the Persian Gulf. And then expand to the shore of Caspian Sea.

The Kurdish people revolution started in the year 1978 and continues to today of May 25, 2018. Ocalan founded Government based on the 'Zagros Mountain Range' to fight occupiers of the former Sassanid and part of Roman Empires. Kurds are the original residence of the Caucus land. Also, Persian of Tamil-India, Arabs of Africa, and Turks of Magnolia took over the land of the forefather of Caucasian Kurds, who established the Mithraism (more than 12,000 years ago), and Aryan (Zoroastrianism, more than 7600 years ago) religions to teach humanity to live side by side in peace. The language of Caucasian Kurdish people’s forefather is used to write the holy book of 'ViDevaDad' for the Mithraism religion, and the holy book of 'Avesta' for the Aryan religion.

The Caucasian (Kew Gazî) Civilization: Started more than 12, 000 Years ago in the Gobekli Tepe to Serve Humanity, This book is the study of the fifty million or more of the Caucasian (Kew Gazî) Kurds without the country. The Caucasian (Kew Gazî) people’s land belongs to the forefather of the Caucasian (Kew Gazî) people. And the Caucasian (Kew Gazî) land is from today India to Europe and from Egypt to Mongolia, which is now divided between Persian of Tamil from India, Black Islamic Arabs from Africa, and Turks from Mongolia. Only, Zagros mountain chain left now for the Caucasian Kurds as the original owner of the Caucasian (Kew Gazî) people’s land.

The Caucasian people are more than 2.5 Billion people in the world. They are divided among countries with many different names. The members of the Caucasian people are calling themselves Russian American, Indian, Kurd, Canadian, English, Italian, French, German, Talysh, Lur and other, for example,

It is impossible to establish one country for 2.5 Billion people, even 'Kurd, Lur, Lak, Talysh, Surkheh-Surkheh of Median Empire are without the country they have the hard time to unite.' many philosophers called on one or two groups within 'the caste system' to unite against others within the caste system. Marxist Leninist, for example, is calling on farmer and labor to unite against the landlord and owner of the successful business leaders (Capitalist).

Also, Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan comes up with the new system to unite entire people in the world against the unjust practice by few. He has the hard time to unite entire Kurds against occupiers of Kurdistan.

In short, the humanities are increasing rapidly without any solution. There is no one perfect system in the world for people to follow.

Author note: Please remember that Dêw (Devas) was a group of creature lived side by side with the human. According to the Methodology stories and the surviving documents (holy books of Videvadad and Avesta), the Dêw (Deva)'s headquarter was located on the Mount Damavand near Tehran-Iran of today. The Dêw (Deva) were always kidnaping young human female to be used as sex slaves, from those women he had children, and those children formed the group to abuse human for thousands of years. In time the war between the Dêw (Deva) groups and human groups are told orally generation after generation. The human groups defeated them and chased them to the Himalayas mountains chain. In time the Dêw (Devas) groups regrouped and formed Deva religion by declaring that Dêw (Deva) is invisible God, It is similar to God HU of the human.

The evolution of the Dêw (Deva) name

Dêw (Deva) group......→ Arīmanius (the group who oppose God HU according to Prophet Mahabad of Mithraism religion)----→ Angra Mainyu (the group against the Mainyu (God HU, who never die) according to Prophet Zoroaster of the Aryan religion).......>God Shiva (Mahadeva) of Deva religion.......>Satan of the Judaism religion......> Shaitan of the Islamic religion......>Devil

The book is starting with the stories about Dêw (Deva) versus Human as the worshipers of God HU. According to the ancient religious stories, God HU created human, and Dêw (Deva) group was living in the same area and had power to abuse human. Note Dêw (Deva) group in time become known as Arīmanius (those who are against God HU).

The members of the Deva religion in Asia (India, China, and other countries of Asia) are worshiping God Dêw (Deva). The members of the Abrahamic religion are worshiping God Deva too but they are using different names to fool their members. The God Dêw (Deva) becomes an equivalent to 'God HU’ of the humanity God. The humanity as the members of the Mithraism, Aryan, and original Jesus religions in the ancient time used to worship only God HU.

In this modern day's God HU and God Dêw (Deva) are defined this way below:

God HU: The enviable God who created human according to Prophet Mahabad (Mahabharat) of Mithraism religious believes God HU is like Sun and people called his followers Sun worshipers. And according to the Prophet Zoroaster of the Aryan religious beliefs, God HU is like Fire (Kurdish: Ar) and people called his followers Fire worshipers or Aryan.

God Dêw (Deva): A Deva in the New Age movement refers to any of the spiritual forces or beings behind nature. The origin of the word 'Deva' comes from the Sanskrit language (The language used by the members of the Mithraism religion in their holy books and by the members of the Aryan religion in their holy books too).

The entire worlds are under the control of few families of Dêw (Deva) now through the economic control, who is pretending to be the God and equivalent to God HU. Indeed, they have successfully destroyed and defeated the members of the Mithraism and the Aryan religions. The entire world population is worshiping Dêw (Deva) families knowingly or unknowingly.

The present monograph was written within the framework of the project Phonosemantic
Vocabulary in Kartvelian Languages (Structure, Semantics, Pragmatics) (No 31/20) funded by
Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation in 2013-2016; the project was implemented at the
Institute of Linguistic Research (specifically, Research Group of Kartvelian Languages), Ilia State
University.
Success of the project proposal was due to a number of factors:
1. Phonetic symbolism and onomatopoeia, as rather significant linguistic phenomena in
Kartvelian languages, was not systematically described and analyzed by scholars; moreover, it was
not studied at all in Svan and Laz; however, these phenomena always attracted scholarly interest,
and this is well attested with occasionally published papers.
2. Notwithstanding the fact that phonosymbolic and onomatopoeic items are parts of actual
language, most of them were not considered “full-fledged members” of the lexicon. Their inclusion
in dictionaries were a disputable issue. Recently published dictionaries (Svan – A. Liparteliani’s
dictionary, Megrelian – O. Kajaia’s and A. Kobalia’s dictionaries, Laz – A. Tandilava’s dictionary,
Georgian Dialect Corpus and dialect dictionaries: http://www.corpora.co), providing a more
comprehensive description of the items in point, stated the necessity of the scholarly study of the
phenomenon in question, on the one hand, and facilitated its complete research.
The present book Phonosemantic Vocabulary in Kartvelian Languages provides analyses of a
number of significant linguistic problems associated with phonosemantics (as a linguistic process)
and phonosemantic vocabulary (as outcome of the process).

The paper is a discussion of the Megrelian data contained in George Ellis’s book Memoir of a Map of the Countries Comprehended
between the Black Sea and the Caspian; with an Account of the Caucasian Nations, and Vocabularies of Their Languages (1788). The
final part of the book presents specimens of the Caucasian languages, including those belonging to the Kartvelian branch. There
are 128 entries. The resource is organized in the following way: the leftmost column displays headwords in English, followed by
translations into Georgian, Megrelian, and Svan. The latter two (Megrelian and Svan) segments are deficient: not all of them contain
translations into all the three languages. There are 62 entries with Megrelian equivalents. Detected spelling and/or transliteration
errors and translation inadequacies may seem abundant for a sample consisting of only 62 entries; however, G. Ellis’s lexicographic
resource should be valued for adequate representations of Megrelian linguistic data and for being the earliest work in the history
of English-Megrelian lexicography.

―Original Vocabularies of Five West Caucasian Languages‖ and provides
information about the author and his work. The English headwords are
accompanied by their translations in the languages spoken in Georgia:
Georgian, Megrelian (―Mingrelian‖), Laz (―Lazian‖), Svan (―Swanetian‖),
and Abkhazian. With a number of positive aspects, Peacock‘s ―Vocabularies‖
should be considered a significant vestige in the history of English-Caucasian
lexicography which can yield much valuable information as a result of the
thorough investigation of individual entries and their translation equivalents in
the five Caucasian languages spoken in Georgia.