“After 2003, I set out to instigate a linguistic revolution in Georgia, inspired by initiatives undertaken in Scandinavia and the Netherlands during the 1970s. “We introduced a rule that all foreign films should be broadcast on television not with dubbed sound, but in their original language with Georgian subtitles,” writes former, now jailed President Mikheil Saakashvili on social media.

As Saakashvili recounts, the dedicated officials meticulously oversaw the implementation of this rule.

He also notes that social networks have achieved what he was unable to complete himself.

“Thanks to this approach, Scandinavians and Dutch people speak English fluently, unlike the rest of Europe, where movies continued to be broadcast with dubbed sound. Subsequently, I brought in two thousand American teachers annually. We were preparing to pass new legislation requiring graduates of medical, engineering, and architectural faculties to defend their theses in English. However, Ivanishvili halted the American teacher programme and revoked the obligations of television stations to promote the English language. He does not see the benefit in people accessing information from English-language sources. Nonetheless, in the meantime, we have kept pace with the technological revolution. Social networks have done what I could not fully achieve. People, especially children and young people, now speak English as much as possible. I speak from personal experience; my children, Nikusha and Alisa, for instance, have spoken English as a second native language since childhood. Alongside this, Nikusha has learned Japanese and Hindi, while Alisa is studying Russian and now French. ‘They study. They speak Georgian at home, but they choose English for general topics.

Is this good or bad? On the one hand, it’s very positive if we want to be competitive globally. However, at the same time, we must not forget the Georgian language, our core identity. The very same process is unfolding worldwide, and we are part of this context,” writes Mikheil Saakashvili.