Georgia celebrates a day of Mother Language

Georgia: The institutions of Georgia and the general public are celebrating National Language Day today, which commemorates large protests that prompted Soviet authorities to abandon efforts to oust Georgian of the status of the official state language of the country. 

The Mother Language Day celebrations featured messages from authorities commemorating the day and occasions, such as the graduation of Georgian language ambassadors who would teach the language to ethnic minority populations around the nation.

The celebration, according to Vato Makharoblishvili, Head of the Georgian Mission to the European Union, is an “important aspect of national identity, history, and national self-consciousness.”

Vato Makharoblishviki tweeted, “Georgia celebrates Mother Language Day today which is an essential part of national identity, history & national self-consciousness. Georgian language belongs to Kartvelian(Iberian) language family & is one of 14 alphabets in/ world included in UNESCO, ICHH.”

Moreover, on the day of the occasion, the Embassy of Georgia to Hungary also shared a message on Twitter commemorating Georgia’s “courageous victory over the Soviet oppressive machine.”

Furthermore, the messages recalled the 1978 date when around 100,000 citizens marched from the central Tbilisi State University block to the Supreme Council building in the city in protest of the government’s attempts to revoke the language’s official state language status.

Georgia has its own writing system, which consists of 33 letters and is based on Georgian phonetics. The Georgian alphabet, which consists of three writing styles that have been used throughout history, has been given national cultural heritage status in Georgia and was included in the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016.