About Dr. Georgi L. Kapchits
Candidate of Philological Sciences
Dr. Georgi Leonidovich Kapchits, born 2 October 1939, is a linguist and folklorist working on the Somali language and its oral tradition. His collection of Somali proverbs, reviewed by B. W. Andrzejewski in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1986, was described there as the largest ever published.
Education
1967 — graduated from the Institute of Oriental Languages, Moscow State University. Qualified as a linguist in the field of Amharic and Somali studies.
2000 — Candidate of Philological Sciences. A dissertation on the syntax of Somali, defended at the Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University, under the supervision of Prof. V. Ya. Porkhomovsky. It appeared as a book from Shaker Verlag, Aachen, in 2005.
Radio
1967–1994 — announcer and translator in the Somali service of Radio Moscow’s World Service. Twenty-seven years of daily work in Somali, for an audience that would have noticed any carelessness at once. The section was closed in 1994.
The listeners were not only an audience. Many of the proverbs in the collections arrived by post from people who had heard the broadcasts — a habit of correspondence that outlived the radio service itself.
From 1994 — commentator at the Information Department of the State Radio Company “Voice of Russia”.
Teaching
Lectured on the Somali language at the universities of Moscow and Berlin — at the Institute of Asian and African Studies of Moscow State University, at the Humboldt University and at the Free University of Berlin.
Travel and field work
1989 — Mogadishu, at the invitation of the Somali Academy of Sciences, for the Congress of Somali Studies.
1999–2001 — the paremiological experiment, in Berlin (Humboldt University, 1999; Free University, 2001) and in Aarhus (2001), supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Forty-five informants completed 656 truncated proverbs.
2001 — Hargeisa, for the 8th International Congress of Somali Studies (3–13 July), with journeys to Borama, Berbera, Gabiley and Sheikh.
2003 — Djibouti.
2009 — Somalia, Somaliland and Puntland, in May, as interpreter and consultant to a Russian television crew. Four travel essays came out of the journey.
2012 — Hargeisa, for the 5th International Book Fair, where Soomaali been ma maahmaahdo was presented on 14 July.
Books and editorial work
Nine books between 1983 and 2012, and a trilingual collection of folktales in 2016. Full imprints — publishers, ISBNs, page counts — are under Books.
As editor: G. L. Permyakov, Fundamentals of Structural Paremiology — compilation and introductory article, 1988; Proverbs and Sayings of the Peoples of the East, 2001.
Congresses and conferences
The documented record, with the paper given at each, runs from Mogadishu in 1989 to the Hargeisa Book Fair of 2012. It is set out in full under Conferences & Congresses.
Research
Four long-running lines of work — the paremiological experiment, the dictionary of proverbs, kinship terminology with V. Ya. Porkhomovsky, and the dialects of southern Somalia — are described under Research Projects. Some twenty articles and papers, with the full texts of those that survive in the archive, are under Articles & Papers.
In the press
Coverage in The Guardian (July 2012) and an interview with the Horn newspaper in Hargeisa the same month; an interview with WardheerNews in 2006, after which readers sent in so many proverbs that the dictionary then in preparation had to be reopened. These, and the recorded interviews, are collected under News and Media & Broadcasting.
Languages
Russian (native), Somali, English. Qualified at university in Amharic alongside Somali.
Personal
Married, two daughters.
This page was rewritten on 11 August 2026, and the separate Curriculum Vitae page was merged into it. The earlier version listed a teaching post at MGIMO, a state decoration, an academic prize, professional memberships, a seat on an editorial board and research grants from DAAD — none of which is supported by any source in the archive — along with an invented quotation and a list of personal hobbies. All of it has been removed. The funding body for the paremiological experiment was the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.