Navajo (Diné Bizaad)

Introduction

Navajo, also known as Diné, belongs to the Athabaskan branch of the Na-Dené language family. Most of the Diné homeland is in northern Arizona, but it also extends into southern Utah and northwestern New Mexico. It is the largest language of the Na-Dené language family.

With some 163,000 speakers, Navajo is one of the few North American Indian languages with a growing population of speakers, but even among the Navajos only 17% of school children speak the language when they enter school.

Structure

Sound System

Sound system

Vowels
Navajo has three vowels /i/, /e/, /a/ which can be short, long, or extra long. Vowel length makes a difference in word meaning.

A cedilla (a hook under the vowel) is used to mark nasalization (production of a sound while the velum, or soft palate, is lowered, so that air escapes partially or wholly through the nose during the production of the sound).

Consonants
Navajo has a rich inventory of consonant sounds.

Navajo Consanents

Navajo uses an apostrophe for the glottal stop /?/. Ejective consonants are marked with an apostrophe after the consonant, e.g., t', k', ts'. The latal lateral is written as .

Tones
Navajo has four tones: high, low, rising, and falling. The rising tone is marked with an acute accent (á, é, í) on the second vowel, while the falling tone is marked by an acute accent on the first syllable.

Click here to listen to an example of spoken Navajo.
Click here to listen to a recording of common words in Navajo from Native Radio Online.

Grammar

Grammar

Noun phrase
Navajo nouns, except for some kinship terms, are not marked for number. For example, tl'izi means both "goat" and "goats." The number distinction is carried by the verb. There are no definite articles, only indefinite ones. If a noun has no indefinite article, it is assumed that it is definite. There is no grammatical gender.

The Navajo rank all beings and objects on the basis of volition as follows: supernatural beings > humans > large animals > small animals > inanimate objects. This ranking divides nouns into classes whereby a being with a lower level of volition cannot act upon a being with a higher volition level. For example, even though Navajos know that horses can kick people, they describe the event as a case where the person let him/herself be kicked by a horse. This interpretation is marked by choice of appropriate pronouns.

Pronouns
Navajo uses the human third-person pronouns (in the form of verb prefixes), called the fourth-person pronouns, when a human is acted upon or when a human acts upon a lower thing. The fourth person allows lower-ranked nouns to be mentioned first to make them more prominent.

If two third-person participants are of the same rank, either ordering of subject and object is permissible. Thus, the Navajo equivalent of "The boy kicked the man" can be either of the two sentences. The difference between the two is the topic -- boy or man.

hastiin	ashkii	bi-ztal
man (object)	boy (subject)	kicked (verb)
ashkii	hastiin	yi-ztal
boy (subject)	man (object)	kicked (verb)

Another interesting feature of Navajo pronouns is that third person pronouns are not marked for gender, i.e., there are no separate words for he and she.

Verb phrase
Navajo sentences are built around verb stems. The subject and object pronouns are incorporated into the verb. The resulting verb structures then function as complete sentences. The verb stems are based on about five hundred verb roots. Each root has a basic meaning that can be extended through the use of affixes (mostly prefixes). It is theoretically possible to have ten prefixes preceding a verb root. Fortunately, that does not happen too often, but stringing up prefixes does result in very long verbs. There is a strict hierarchy in which the prefixes are ordered.

Vocabulary

Navajo girl

Navajo rug

Like other Na-Dene languages, Navajo tends not to borrow words from other languages. Instead, it uses native elements to create new words. For instance, the Navajo word for telephone is béésh be hane'é which literally translates as "instrument, with it talking takes place."

To give you an idea of what words in Navajo look like, here are a few examples:

One	láá'íí
Two	naaki
Three	táá'
Four	Dii'
Five	ashdla'
Man	hastiin
Woman	asdzáán
Sun	shá
Moon	tlehonaa'éí
Water	tó
Hello (literally, "It is good")	yá'át'ééh
Good bye	hagooónee

Writing

Writing
Navajo was an unwritten language prior to the middle of the 19th century when a Navajo word list was first published. However, by the beginning of the 20th century, a number of religious texts, grammars, and dictionaries were compiled by missionaries, each of whom used a different writing system. As a result, there were many ways to write Navajo. In 1939, a standardized alphabet was designed, and during the following decade a literacy drive resulted in the publication of bilingual primers, children's books, and a dictionary. The new standardized alphabet was not popular among the Navajo who did not trust the motives behind the literacy drive. In recent years, a revival of interest in the Navajo language and the development of Navajo computer fonts has made it easier to publish written materials in Navajo.

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Navajo.

Do any words in the text look familiar?
Can you identify tone marking in the script?

UHDR Navajo
Translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Navajo Code Talkers

Navajo Woman

Navajo Code Talkers
One of the keys to the U.S. victory in the Pacific was the Navajo language. Early in the war, the Japanese began using English-speaking soldiers to intercept American communications. In response, the U.S. military began using codes so complex that it took hours to decode a message.

Philip Johnston, a World War I veteran and the son of a missionary, was raised on the Navajo reservation and spoke Navajo fluently. He came up with the idea of using the Navajo language that was little known outside of the Navajo reservation as a code.

The Marine Corps followed Johnston's suggestion and put out a call to the Navajo. Twenty-nine Navajo responded to the initial call and enlisted as radio operators in the Marine Corps in early 1942. Their efforts, and those of several hundred additional Navajo who enlisted subsequently, are credited with making possible U.S. victory at Iwo Jima. The Navajo Code Talkers created messages by first translating Navajo words into English, then using the first letter of each English word to decipher the meaning. Because different Navajo words might be translated into different English words for the same letter, the messages were extremely difficult to decode. In fact, the Japanese were never able to crack the code.

The code remained classified until 1968. Since then, the Code Talkers have been given long-overdue recognition. The Pentagon opened an exhibit honoring their role in 1992. The surviving 300 Code Talkers were awarded Congressional Silver Medals, and the original 29 Code Talkers were awarded Congressional Gold Medals.

Click here for more details.
Navajo Code-Talkers' Dictionary

Resources

Navajo Language Study Resources
Practicing your Navajo
Diné Bizaad: The Navajo Language
UCLA Language Materials Project - Navajo Profile
UCLA Language Materials Project Navajo Links
UCLA Language Learning Materials Listing for Navajo
University of Minnesota Less Commonly Taught Languages Database
Houghton Mifflin Encyclopedia of North American Indians - Navajo Language
Yamada Language Center guide for Navajo
The Navajo Language Home Page
Native Web
Open Directory - Navajo