27 Facts About Navajo language

Navajo language is spoken primarily in the Southwestern United States, especially on the Navajo language Nation.

Language has struggled to keep a healthy speaker base, although this problem has been alleviated to some extent by extensive education programs in the Navajo Nation, including the creation of versions of the films Finding Nemo and Star Wars dubbed into Navajo.

Navajo language has a fairly large phoneme inventory, including several uncommon consonants that are not found in English.

The Navajo refer to themselves as the, with their language known as or.

Navajo language is most closely related to Western Apache, with which it shares a similar tonal scheme and more than 92 percent of its vocabulary.

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Apachean languages, of which Navajo is one, are thought to have arrived in the American Southwest from the north by 1500, probably passing through Alberta and Wyoming.

Archaeological finds considered to be proto-Navajo language have been located in the far northern New Mexico around the La Plata, Animas and Pine rivers, dating to around 1500.

The code proved for the most part effective for conveying secrecy, as the Navajo language was seldom learned by spies attempting to break American codes.

Navajo language lands were initially colonized by the Spanish in the early seventeenth century, shortly after this area was annexed as part of the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain.

However, data collected in 1980 showed that 85 percent of Navajo first-graders were bilingual, compared to 62 percent of Navajo of all ages—early evidence of a resurgence of use of their traditional language among younger people.

In 1984, to counteract the language's historical decline, the Navajo Nation Council decreed that the Navajo language would be available and comprehensive for students of all grade levels in schools of the Navajo Nation.

Under tribal law, fluency in Navajo language is mandatory for candidates to the office of the President of the Navajo language Nation.

Navajo language has a simple glottal stop used after vowels, and every word that would otherwise begin with a vowel is pronounced with an initial glottal stop.

In general, Navajo language speech has a slower speech tempo than English does.

In general, Navajo language verbs contain more morphemes than nouns do, but noun morphology is less transparent.

In terms of basic word order, Navajo has been classified as a subject–object–verb language.

In Navajo language, verbs are the main elements of their sentences, imparting a large amount of information.

Example, Navajo language has no single verb that corresponds to the English 'give'.

Navajo language contains a separate system of classifiers that generally marks for voice.

Around this point, the Navajo language began importing some, though still not many, English words, mainly by young schoolchildren exposed to English.

Navajo language has expanded its vocabulary to include Western technological and cultural terms through calques and Navajo language descriptive terms.

Only one Navajo word has been fully absorbed into the English language: hogan – a term referring to the traditional houses.

Early attempts at a Navajo language orthography were made in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Anthropologists were frustrated by Navajo language's having several sounds that are not found in English and lack of other sounds that are.

Finally, the current Navajo language orthography was developed between 1935 and 1940 by Young and Morgan.

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Navajo language represents nasalized vowels with an ogonek, sometimes described as a reverse cedilla; and represents the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative with a barred L .

For example, in proper Navajo language writing, the ogonek below lowercase a is written centered below the letter, whereas fonts for a with ogonek intended for Polish and Lithuanian such as those used in common Web browsers render the ogonek connected to the bottom right of the letter.