The Forty Languages of the Caucuses

The dozens of languages of the Caucasus say much about the Georgia conflict.
By Ellen Barry
Published: August 24, 2008

Two weeks ago, when Georgian troops began shelling Tskhinvali, Eduard Kabulov could not stop thinking about the trouble he had taken to learn Georgian: its base-20 counting system; its ridiculous consonant clusters ("gvprtskvni"); its diabolical irregular verbs.

Kabulov, who is 22, had grown up in a valley where South Ossetians have coexisted with Georgians for many centuries, but that did not make it any easier. Ossetians speak a language related to Farsi; Georgians speak a language whose closest relative, some linguists say, is Basque. Kabulov's friends were so hostile to the Georgians and their language that he kept his studies secret. He sounded bitter talking about it. He hasn't opened a textbook since Aug. 8.

The languages of the Caucasus explain much about the current conflict.

About 40 indigenous tongues are spoken in the region - more than any other area in the world aside from Papua New Guinea and parts of the Amazon, where the jungles are so thick that small tribes rarely encounter one another. In the Caucasus, mountains serve the same purpose, offering small ethnicities a natural refuge against more powerful or aggressive ones.

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