Navajo language

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Navajo
Diné bizaad
Pronunciation	tìnépìz̥ɑ̀ːt
Native to	United States
Region	Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado
Ethnicity	Navajo
Native speakers	169,359 (2011)[1]
Language family	Dené–Yeniseian? Na-Dené Athabaskan Southern Athabaskan Southwestern Apache Western Navajo
Writing system	Latin (Navajo alphabet) Navajo Braille
Language codes
ISO 639-1	nv
ISO 639-2	nav
ISO 639-3	nav
Glottolog	nava1243
ELP	Diné Bizaad (Navajo)
The Navajo Nation, where the language is most spoken
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The Navajo language (Navajo: Diné Bizaad) is a Southern Athabaskan language that is spoken in the United States, specifically in the Navajo Nation (in the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah). It is the most widely spoken Native American language in the US and the most spoken Indigenous language in the Americas north of the US-Mexico border. In 2011, almost 170,000 Americans spoke Navajo at home. Navajo is famous for being used by the Navajo Code Talkers during World War II (Pacific Theater).

Compared to many other languages, the Navajo language has a lot of sounds, including many that are not found in the English language. Navajo is also a tonal language, like Chinese, which means that pitch is used to make words different from each other. English is not a tonal language. For these reasons and many more, many English speakers find it difficult to learn Navajo.

In Navajo, new words are made by adding prefixes and suffixes to a part of a word called the stem. These prefixes and suffixes add meaning, such as tense, who is doing the action, and so on. In Navajo, sentences are arranged as subject-object-verb although they can be arranged in other ways too.

Navajo does not have a lot of loanwords from other languages.

The Navajo language is written with the Latin alphabet, just like English. The current alphabet was developed in the 1930s. Before this, the Navajo did not have their own alphabet.

1. ↑ Ryan, Camille (August 2013). "Language Use" (PDF). Census.gov. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 5, 2016. Retrieved August 6, 2014.