Navajo Language

The Endurance of the Navajo Language

The Navajo Nation, also known as Diné, is one of the largest and most enduring tribes of Native Americans in North America. The same holds true for their native language. Navajo is a member of the Athabaskan language family, and it is spoken by members of the Navajo nation located in the Southwestern United States. There are nearly 150,000 indigenous speakers of Navajo, and the numbers continue to remain steady. The language is spoken in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. It remains on of the very few Native American languages that are used by an indigenous group on a daily basis.

The Navajo language belongs to the Na-Dene family of languages, which is in turn a part of the Athabaskan language family.  The Athabaskan are a large group of distantly linked Native American people. They are located in 2 chief Northern and Southern clusters in North America. They all share a language family, despite the distance between some of the groups. The Northern group of the Athabaskan is more densely numbered, but there are at least 4 languages from this family spoken in the United States Southwest. Navajo is one of the Southern Athatbaskan languages, and language family is the largest in North America in number of languages spoken and number speakers.

The Navajo language is notable because it is still spoken widely today among the Navajo Nation, with over one-half of the people speaking the language in their homes. Often, Navajo parents introduce the language to their infant children as their primary language. The language does show a bit of a decline among young Navajo people, as more of them move out to urbanized areas, and begin to use English in everyday life.

Another point to note about the Navajo language is the key role it played during World War II. A code was used by military code talkers that was based on the Navajo language. This code was used to send secure and indiscernible military messages over radio.

More research has been conducted on the Navajo Nation and the Navajo language than any other Native American tribe residing within the United States. This might account for the continued interest and prevalence of the language among the Navajo people themselves and scholars of language.  The Navajo language itself is very complex. It is highly descriptive and precise in its execution. One word can be used to convey an entire thought, idea, or emotion, while at the same time describing a considerable list of properties, including physical traits, person, plurality, and gender of a phrase.

The Navajo language is immensely different from English. In terms of word usage, English is downright verbose in its sentence structure and descriptive methods. Where sentence structure is concerned, the Navajo language uses verb stems to construct sentence. These verb stems end up working like complete sentences.  Further, the subject and pronouns are integrated into the verb through a series of prefixes and suffixes with specific denotations. Another way the Navajo differs from English is that there is no gender dissimilarity in third person pronouns.

The Navajo language was first seen in written form in 1849. In the early 20th century, missionaries produced religious documents and Navajo dictionaries, often using their own varying versions of the Navajo alphabet and spelling. By 1939, a new standardized alphabet was finalized, providing a uniform method of writing the Navajo language. However, the sentiment of this accomplishment was not popular among the Navajo people themselves.

The Navajo language, though complicated to learn, has remained an enduring symbol of the Navajo Nation through the years. It continues to be used ceremonially, traditionally, and functionally on an everyday basis by the thousands of Navajo still residing in the region that they have been in for thousand of years.  The Navajo language provided American military the ability to communicate safely and securely during World War II. The Navajo language is a part of the framework of the continent of North America, as well as the nation of the United States.

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