Navajo

Primary language family: Dené–Yeniseian
Subfamily: Na-Dené

Endonymic glossonym: diné bizaad, naabeehó bizaad
Exonymic glossonyms: Navajo
 Approximate number of native speakers =169,359

The modern flag of the Navajo nation

Introduction

The Navajo language is known to native speakers as:
diné bizaad : the people's language
diné : man, the people
bizaad : language

But it is sometimes called:
naabeehó bizaad : the Navajo language
Naabeehó comes from the Tewa word naabahu (cultivated fields, they took our field). It's been speculated that this is how the Tewa described the Navajo to the Spanish.

In 2011, there were 169,359 documented native speakers. It has the most native speakers of any indigenous language in North America, although other indigenous languages are spoken across a larger area of the continent.

To read more about the origins of this language click here. 

Language family

Navajo refers to English as: bilagáana bizaad.
Bilagáana is thought to be derived from the Spanish word "americano" meaning "American".
The name America comes from Americus Vespucius, the Latinised version of the name of Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512), the Italian explorer.

 

The language itself

Here I will give a very brief summary of some of the most interesting features of this language.

Verbs

Verbs have the potential to be extremely complex. In their simplest form, they start as a stem:
  1. A root to identify an action (ne' : to play)
  2. A suffix which determines the mode and aspect of the verb. (e.g. né: am playing, e.g. neeł : will play). Think of the different modes and aspects as flavours of a verb. Each flavour gives information about the action, e.g. one flavour means an action has ended, another flavour means the action is coming to an end.
There are up to seven modes with which a verb can be conjugated.
Some modes (e.g. future) are the equivalent of English tenses (e.g. future tense, I will X). 
Some modes (e.g. optative) are the equivalent of English moods (e.g. subjunctive mood, I would X).

The stem is modified:
  1. Stem (e.g. né: am playing, was playing, will be playing, incomplete action)
  2. Prefix for number and person (e.g. naashné : I am playing)
  3. Outer prefix (e.g. naashné : I am playing around, marker for continuative aspect)
If you change the number: neiiʼné – We are playing
If you change the person: naniné – You (singular) are playing

If you change the mode : ndeeshneeł - I will play. 
Notice that the prefix for number and person has become deesh. The outer prefix also changed (to n-) with this. This is an unfortunate feature of the language since you would expect naashné to become "naashneeł". However this word does not exist.

To make the system more complicated, verbs have 4 classifiers: Ø-, ł-, d-, and l-. This is quite difficult to explain, so I will try to explain clearly with examples. They modify valency, transitivity and voice (i.e. active versus passive). In simple terms, this means that you can switch the classifier of a verb to clarify that it is not happening itself but it is being caused by someone. For example:
Transitivity increase: "That water is boiling" (verb contains -Ø-) becomes "some agent is boiling water" (verb now contains -ł-). 
Transitivity decrease: "He's burning it" (verb contains -Ø-) becomes "it's burning" (verb now contains -d-).

Yei Bi Chei dancers. Edward S. Curtis. USA, 1900. The Wellcome Collection, London

Negation

Verbs can be negated in a sentence by placing the word "doo" before the verb, and the word "da" after the verb. Dooda means "no".

Nouns

Nouns are not essential to forming a sentence and a single verb can contain the information of an entire sentence in English. Therefore nouns are relatively straightforward. Most nouns, for example, are not inflected for number (singular versus plural).
Nouns can be affixed with many adjectives but this is rarely more than 4-5. 

 

Possessive

Possessive prefixes can be added to nouns. E.g. "house" versus "my house".

There is a lot more to the grammar of Navajo but this will suffice for an introduction!

 

Phonology

The most common consonant in the language is the glottal stop. 
In English, a glottal stop allows us to verbally differentiate the phrases "Jimmy earns" and "Jimmy yearns".

This gives the language an interesting and recognisable rhythm. For example:
e'e'aah : west
ha'a'aah : east

Vowels are often nasalised, indicated by hook in the letter. Vowels often vary by their length, which is shown in writing by repeating the vowel.
An accent above a vowel represents a raised pitch. This often changes the meaning of a word completely. For example:
ni : you
ní : he says

Modern times

The Navajo nation calls itself: Naabeehó Bináhásdzo. It has a population of 356,890 in a territory of 71,000 km^2 (27,413 sq mi). It possesses the largest territory of any Indian reservation. As recently as 2016, around 150,000 acres of land were returned to the Nation by the USA.

The current President-Elect is Jonathan Nez. He will be the 9th president since the introduction of this office in 1937.
The capital of the nation is Window Rock, Arizona (Navajo: Tségháhoodzání).
It is also the home of the Navajo Nation Museum. This museum has worked with film studios to produce at least two Navajo language dubs of popular films: The Empire Strikes Back and Finding Nemo.
From 1943 to 1957, the Navajo nation produced a newspaper: Ádahooníłígíí (occurrences in the area). In 1959, this was replaced by The Navajo Times, which is tragically written in English, with only occasional Navajo phrases. The newspaper faced political interference and controversy, resulting in complete shut down in 1987. Today, it is financially independent, and it has become the largest Native American owned newspaper company.

Sage Honga, 22,  tribal affiliation: Hualapai, Hopi & Diné (Navajo), Grand Canyon, Arizona (Carlotta Cardana/The Red Road Project, 2015)

 

Learning Navajo

It is possible for the average person to learn Navajo in the world today. This puts it in a far better position than most indigenous American languages. Unfortunately, there is no online translation software with Navajo support, and online resources are limited. Most of the books and papers about the languages are old, dull, incomplete, or highly academic. It would be impossible to learn fluent Navajo without finding a native speaker tutor, and for practical reasons, the most serious Navajo learners would need to live close to or inside the reservations for some months or years. Hopefully this situation will improve as technology advances. Perhaps one day you'll learn fluent Navajo with an AI assistant in your smartphone. For now, it remains fun to learn basic phrases in this beautiful language.


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Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this article. 

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