The language of birch bark letters is being studied by participants of a new linguistic circle at KBSU

A new linguistic circle, “The Language of Birch Bark Letters,” has begun its work at the Social and Humanitarian Institute of the Kabardino-Balkarian State University named after Kh.M. Berbekov.

Professor of the Department of Russian Language and General Linguistics Marina Kremshokalova conducts classes for second- and third-year students majoring in “Domestic Philology. Russian Language and Literature.”

The goal of the project is an in-depth study of Old Russian texts in phonetic, grammatical, and lexical aspects, as well as introducing students to research work using various methods, including corpus analysis. Birch bark letters will be studied on the basis of the information retrieval system “National Corpus of the Russian Language.”

For students, such work is important because it lays the foundation for understanding linguistic phenomena that are difficult to interpret from a synchronic point of view, and also allows for research on text materials that require not only linguistic knowledge, but also an understanding of the culture of the people as a whole and the culture of oral and written communication, ethnolinguistic analysis,

— explained Marina Kremshokalova.

At the first meeting of the linguistic circle, issues related to the history of the appearance of birch bark letters, their scientific study and the problems of their translation into modern Russian were discussed.

Schoolchildren — students of specialized philological classes from Nalchik, Baksan and the cadet boarding school in Babugenta — joined the lecture remotely.

The circle meetings are planned to be held every month, and the most interesting reports will be recommended for publication.