Navajo

Navajo Orthography

• Many writing systems were used originally
• First was a military code in 1849
• In the 1930s a standard alphabet was developed
• It is referred to as the Young-Morgan alphabet after the creators

Navajo Morphology and Grammar

The Navajo Language

• Uses 4th person to refer to people in the nominative when an animal or object is in the accusative or when referring to two different people in one sentence.
• No definite articles, lack of an article implies a specific noun.
• No grammatical gender: "he" and "she" are identical.
• Nouns are classified based by animacy: supernatural > human > large animal > small animal > inanimate object.
• Verb stems are different based on the nature of the object.
• Word order: SOV

Navajo is quite closely related to other Southern Athabaskan languages such as Jicarilla and Western Apache. However, it is strikingly different from most languages that we have studied in this class, as shown with the characteristics above.

Navajo is important to preserve because these distinct charateristics, (ex. 4th person) are extremely valuable to langauge diversity. The well-documented nature of Navajo also provides a detailed look into native languages of the Americas, potentially leading to further important linguistic discoveries.

Navajo endangerment status

Although Navajo seems to be flourishing, proficiency tests in some reservations found that 82% of the children in a school did not know any Navajo.

The Navajo Language

The Navajo were one of the first groups to establish internally run bilingual education.

They also have a historically special status because of the Navajo code talkers in WWII.

Navajo greatly suffered from the Bureau of Indian Affairs' boarding school program in the nineteenth century.

Navajo also abandoned their language because of widespread racism.

Young populations moving to cities abandon their language.

Navajo Code Talkers

• Proposed to the military for use in the beginning of WWII
• Estimated only 30 non-Navajo knew it at the time
• Complex grammar made it indecipherable
• Took a crew 20 seconds to do the same task a computer did in 30 minutes

The Navajo language is a Southern Athabaskan language spoken by roughly 175,000 people. 0.3% of Americans report Navajo as their native language.

Navajo Phonology

Distinct Phonological Characteristics

• Vowel length makes a difference in meaning.
• Navajo is also a tonal language: high, low, rising, falling.
• The aspiration is particularly powerful in Navajo.
• Navajo includes the voiceless lateral fricative, a rare sound across languages.

Vowels

Athabaskan languages

The Athabaskan (or Dené) language family is comprised of 53 languages divided into three overarching groups:

• Northern Athabaskan
• Pacific Coast Athabaskan
• Southern Athabaskan