Tsereteli, Konstantin (1921–2004)

Scholar of comparative Semitics, Aramaic dialectology, and Neo-Aramaic; professor at the State University of Tbilisi, Georgia.

Scholar of comparative Semitics, Aramaic dialectology, and Neo-Aramaic; professor at the State University of Tbilisi, Georgia. As a student Tsereteli devoted himself to Caucasian and Eastern languages, including Old Persian, Classical Armenian, Abkhaz, and Avar, adding Hebrew and Aramaic when he was a graduate student. He subsequently became interested in the Modern Eastern-Aramaic dialects spoken by the many Assyrians living in Georgia. His original work on these dialects resulted in a great number of publications written in Georgian and/or Russian. Some of them were subsequently translated into western languages. He also published a description of Classical Syriac (1979, in Russian) and a short historical grammar of Aramaic, covering nearly three millennia of the history of the Aramaic languages (1982, in Georgian and Russian). A Festschrift was presented to him in 1993.