Alexandra Aikhenvald

Alexandra Yurievna ("Sasha") Aikhenvald (Eichenwald) (born September 1, 1957 in Moscow, Russian SFSR) is a linguist specialising in Linguistic typology and the Arawak language family (including Tariana) of the Brazilian Amazon basin. She is a professor at the James Cook University.

Alexandra Aikhenvald was born in an assimilated (Russian-speaking) Jewish family in Moscow. She was fascinated by languages from early childhood, picking up some Spanish from her parents' Spanish flatmate, and dreaming of majoring in Latin and Classical studies in university. A friend taught her German during her high school years, and she also mastered French. Her Jewish surname created many difficulties for her in her pursuit of formal studies within the Soviet system. In an interview on an ABC program she commented: "Jews will always remain second-class citizens in Russia, no matter how hard they work."

Alexandra Aikhenvald earned her undergraduate degree from Moscow State University, with a thesis on Anatolian languages (Hittite). She also studied Sanskrit, Akkadian, Lithuanian, Finnish, Hungarian, Arabic, Italian and Ancient Greek, Outside of her classes, she learned Estonian and Hebrew. After graduation, she joined the research staff of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where she earned her Cand. Sc. degree (Soviet equivalent of Ph.D.) in 1984 with a thesis on the "Structural and Typological Classification of Berber Languages" (1984). She published the first Russian grammar of modern Hebrew in 1985. She also mastered Yiddish, the language of her grandparents, which was, however, never spoken at home.

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