Languages of Americas: Navajo
hey! I’m doing the 7 day Languages of Americas Challenge created by @languagessi ! Today is my first day, so I decided to research the Navajo language, which is the most commonly spoken indigenous language in my country, the United States.
What is the language called in English and the language itself? In English, the language is called Navajo (occasionally Navaho in older sources), while in Navajo, it’s called Diné bizaad or Naabeehó bizaad. “Diné” means “people” in Navajo, so “Diné bizaad” means “people’s language."
Where is the language spoken? Navajo is mostly spoken in the Southwestern United States, especially in the Navajo Nation.
How many people speak the language? I wasn’t able to find figures for overall speakers, but most speakers are in the US, which has around 170,000 people who speak Navajo at home.
Which language family does it belong to? What are some of its relative languages? Navajo belongs to the Southern Athabaskan subfamily of the Dené-Yeniseian language family. Other Dené-Yeniseian languages include Eyak and Tlingit (both indigenous Alaskan languages), while languages belonging to the same Southern Athabaskan include many indigenous Alaskan languages. It amazed me what a broad geographical region the Dené-Yeniseian are spoken over. Here’s a map that illustrates how far-reaching these languages are.
What writing system does the language use? Historically, Navajo wasn’t a written language. As a result, its script wasn’t finalized until the 1930s, but it’s based on the Latin script (which English uses). The alphabet is called the Navajo alphabet and does look pretty different from other many other languages that use this script because Navajo has several sounds not found in languages such as English. There are Navajo keyboards available on both iOS and Android developed in 2012 and 2013.
What kind of grammatical features does the language have? Based on what I read, Navajo seems to be a complex language difficult to classify. I’m definitely not an expert on linguistics so some of what I read was hard for me to understand. Something I found interesting was that while Navajo generally uses the subject-object-verb word order (SOV), there’s also a “noun ranking” system that ranks nouns based on categories (humans, animals, and inanimate objects) and attributes like strength, size, and intelligence. Despite the general SOV word order, an object might come before a subject if it has a higher rank based on this system.
What does the language sound like? Here’s a YouTube video by I Love Languages! with basic Navajo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6P1snUWFR4
What do you personally find interesting about the language?A couple things! One is that Navajo has its own Braille alphabet, which uses some of the letters of Unified English Braille, as well as a few additional letters. This alphabet was officially adopted by the Navajo Nation in 2015. Another thing that interested me is the hard work that many people have put into preserving and reviving Navajo. There are Navajo radio stations, and even a Navajo translation of Star Wars, and several universities offer classes in the language. According to Omniglot, technology has actually helped revive the language, since people can use Navajo keyboards and computer fonts.
Resources to study Navajo:
Duolingo Navajo course: https://www.duolingo.com/enroll/nv/en/Learn-Navajo
Navajo workbook: https://www.amazon.com/Conversational-Navajo-Workbook-Introductory-Non-Native/dp/1940322324/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=navajo&qid=1597410680&s=books&sr=1-2
Navajo slang terms: http://www.angelfire.com/rock3/countryboy79/navajo_slang.html
Wikipedia in Navajo: https://nv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Din%C3%A9_Bizaad
Navajo memrise course: https://app.memrise.com/course/2215337/navajo-1/
Here’s a photo of writing in Navajo by Caitlyn Black, a high school student in Utah.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_language https://omniglot.com/writing/navajo.htm
