impermanence in language

The Japanese language has a lot of fascinating cultural artifacts embedded within its grammar and vocabulary. One such artifact that has always struck me was the unusual place that the verb for death occupies in the language.

Verbs in Japanese, like in many other languages, are conjugated to modify their meaning or grammatical function. Verb conjugation follows a pattern that is based on the verb’s class and ending.

Example: 食べる (taberu) which means “to eat”. This is an ichidan verb. The base stem in this word is 食べ (tabe) while the suffix is the syllable る (ru). Other verbs in the same group are conjugated according to the same pattern, although not every verb ending in る belongs to this group.

• 食べた (tabeta): ate (past tense)
• 食べない (tabenai): not eat (negative)
• 食べよう (tabeyou): let’s eat (volitional)

And so on. There are nine possible dictionary-form endings for godan verbs (う, く, ぐ, す, つ, ぬ, ぶ, む, and る), and speakers of the language must learn how each ending changes during conjugation.

One of these verbs is special: 死ぬ (shinu) “to die.”

死ぬ is the only commonly used verb in standard modern Japanese that ends in the ぬ (nu) suffix (the verb 往ぬ or 去ぬ, inu, survives in archaic and dialectal usage). It is therefore the only common modern example of the ぬ-ending conjugation pattern, although it follows the regular godan system rather than an entirely specific pattern of its own.

• 死んだ (shinda): died (past tense)
• 死なない (shinanai): don’t die (negative)
• 死のう (shinou): let’s die (volitional)

There are many more conjugated and derived forms besides these (e.g. polite form, potential, passive, causative, causative passive). These do not require a separate system to be memorized just for 死ぬ. Even its past-tense sound change is shared with verbs ending in む and ぶ. Still, what an interesting verb to be the only common modern verb with its ending!

Is it just a coincidence that the verb meaning “to die” would occupy such an unusual grammatical position? There is another interesting example of apparent specialization in the Japanese language, but this time in its written form.

Written Japanese uses three different scripts: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Kanji is the most iconic of these scripts, originally adapted from Chinese, and is used to write “content words” such as nouns and verb stems. The government’s list of kanji for ordinary use contains 2,136 characters, although newspapers may use additional characters with pronunciation guides.

One of the reasons why kanji is so difficult to memorize, especially for those who are learning Japanese as a second language, is the multiple readings or pronunciations of the characters. Many kanji characters have an on-yomi (a Sino-Japanese reading derived from Chinese) and at least one kun-yomi (a native Japanese reading), although some have only one type.

The character for “life” is 生 and has at least ten different readings, and is one of the most versatile characters in the language.

The character for “death” was used earlier: 死. This character has an on-yomi of し (shi) and a kun-yomi of しぬ (shinu), conventionally written 死ぬ with the final kana outside the character. It is also used in compound words such as 死亡 (shibō, “death”) and in the literary verb 死する (shisuru, “to die”).

It is tempting to imagine that the concept of “death” was given special treatment in the cultivation of the Japanese language, although these linguistic facts do not establish that. Japanese aesthetics includes a concept called 物の哀れ (mono no aware), often translated as “the pathos of things,” which describes a sensitivity to the emotional dimensions of things, especially their transience. Changing of seasons, fleeting relationships, and of course the ephemeral nature of life itself are all different ways the sentiment manifests. The unusual position of 死ぬ can be read as a poetic reminder of this sentiment, even if it was not deliberately embedded into the language.