Prof. George Hewitt

Review of Heinz Fähnrich Kartwelisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch

Review of Heinz Fähnrich Kartwelisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, in BSOAS

In 1998 the late Giorgij Klimov published his  Etymological Dictionary of the Kartvelian Languages, which I reviewed in these pages. In that review I wrote: 'In 1990 the prolific (East) German Caucasologist Heinz Fähnrich (from Jena) and his Tbilisi collaborator (half-Georgian, half-Mingrelian) Zurab Sardzhveladze, a specialist in both Old Georgian and comparative kartvelology, produced their own 619-page 'Comparative Dictionary of the Kartvelian Languages' in Georgian. A German translation (unavailable to the present reviewer) appeared in 1995. The latter pair acknowledge the importance of Klimov's contribution, whilst Klimov praises the insights of the rival title — Klimov often used to lecture at Tbilisi's Pushkin Pedagogical Institute, where Sardzhveladze worked, and the two men were close friends with high mutual respect.' The German-Georgian team went on to produce in 2000 an 816-page 'second, expanded and revised edition' of their original, again in Georgian (Tbilisi: Sulxan-Saba Orbeliani State University Press). And now a sole-authored German work joins the list. It will perhaps be instructive to compare this both with Klimov ([K] 1998) and Fähnrich-Sardzhveladze ([F-S1] 1990/1995 and [F-S2] 2000).

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