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Navajo | |
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Diné bizaad | |
Pronunciation | tìnépìz̥ɑ̀ːt |
Native to | United States |
Region | Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado |
Ethnicity | Navajo |
Native speakers | 169,359 (2011)[1] |
Dené–Yeniseian?
| |
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 | |
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.