Expanding from the Small World of the Russian Language

I specialize in the Russian language and linguistics. When I tell people this, I'm often asked, "Why did you choose Russian?" Why do people always seek a reason for everything? It's one of those tricky questions. There were times I tried to give a plausible-sounding answer, like "Because of Dostoevsky..." but lately, I often just say, "It was a hunch." I don't say this just to avoid the question; I actually feel this answer is quite on the mark.

For a hunch, I think it was a good choice. The Russian language satisfies my linguistic interests, as it retains many traces of ancient linguistic phenomena and has numerous peculiar grammatical rules. While many Indo-European languages lost their case inflections long ago, in Russian, not only nouns and pronouns but also proper nouns and even numerals change their form. This makes it difficult for loanwords to enter the language. Furthermore, while the tenses are simple—future, present, and past—there are many unique grammatical phenomena. For instance, the future and present tenses conjugate according to person, whereas the past tense alone changes according to the gender of the subject. There are also rules like "20 students" being written in the plural, while "21 students" must be written in the singular. No matter how many times I discuss these in class, they're so amusing that I laugh every time. It seems this somewhat quirky Russian language suits my personality.

There is no genealogical relationship between Russian and Japanese. However, when comparing them from the perspective of linguistics, my other specialty, surprising commonalities emerge. Take, for instance, the Japanese expression "...ni naru" (to become). In phrases like "o-naku nari ni naru" (to pass away), "kekkon suru koto ni naru" (to get married), "zenbu de sen-en ni narimasu" (it comes to 1,000 yen), and "oide ni naru" (an honorific for "to come/go"), the verb "naru," which originally means "change," has expanded its meaning. It can add a euphemistic nuance, suggesting that something happened naturally, independent of one's will, and has even extended to form honorific expressions. This exact same semantic extension is also found in the Russian verb стать (stat'), which means "to become." Incidentally, such meanings are not found in the English word "become." One of the goals of linguistics is to explore linguistic universals, and comparing two unique languages like Japanese and Russian can lead to encounters with astonishing similarities.

The Russian language, which I started on a hunch, has become an indispensable part of my life. I may not have had a strong motivation to begin with, and my research might not be of great service to society, but I hope to convey at least a little of the joy of this field of study to the students I meet in my classes.