But Richards says the feedback has been strong, and the implications are broad. Around of the world's languages are spoken by fewer than people, and about are spoken by fewer than 10 people, according to the National Virtual Translation Center. The late Peter Ladefoged, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and a leading authority on endangered languages until his death in , predicted that half the languages in existence today will be gone within a century -- a common assessment in the field.
If modern civilization helped bring so many ancient tongues to the brink of extinction, it might just produce the technology to save a few, too. Lest aspiring speakers get ahead of themselves, Singer notes that students won't learn Navajo overnight.
Oh, no! It's tonal, and it's got nasalized vowels -- you can study it for decades and never really be fluent. Witherspoon was quickly struck by the language's complexity. If I had to compare it to something, I'd maybe say it sounds Asian.
You spend most of the first quarter just learning the sounds. Still, Witherspoon says she intends to plow through and hopefully continue her study in the years ahead. It's like traveling to another country without leaving this one," she says. It'd be like letting English die. No matter how small a population is, I don't think it's right to let a culture die. The American Academy's Rebekah Richards says many of her school's students feel a similar draw to Singer's classes.
Although the vast majority of students are high school age, she notes that a couple are in their 50s and "just always wanted to learn Navajo. It opens doors that weren't otherwise available to students. Like many Native American children, she had little chance to speak her language.
More than years ago, the U. All the instruction was in English. The native cultures and languages of the children were discouraged. In the last 20 to 30 years, tribal governments have started to promote the teaching of Native American languages in schools. The U. Department of Education now also supports Native American language programs. She teaches Navajo to students at Holbrook High School. Jackson said both she and her students have an important part in keeping their language alive.
The town of Holbrook is an hour by car from the Navajo Nation. The 69,square-kilometer territory is the largest of the Indian reservations in the United States. The Navajo Nation covers parts of four states in the American Southwest. It is about the same size as the country of Ireland. During the s, increasing numbers of European settlers in America moved west. In , the federal government began a campaign to deport Navajos from their lands. The natives were moved to the northwest in a series of marches called the "Long Walk.
Navajo leaders and the U. Western Apache is the most closely related language to Navajo and the two languages share a lot of the same words. One aspect of Navajo that you should find easy is the writing system. It was developed in the s and is based on the Latin script. The writing system may look a bit complicated at first but this is mainly due to the fact it has a lot of accents.
Try to say these words and then check out the video below to hear the actual pronunciation of them. Each noun will be either masculine or feminine or neuter in some other languages like Polish. For a native English speaker, pronouncing words in Navajo will be difficult at first. You may have trouble producing the sounds as Navajo contains many sounds that do not exist in the English language. Navajo is also a tonal language which English is not. Some languages, such as Chinese, are tonal meaning that pitch is used to make words different from each other.
The word order of sentences is very different. In Navajo, the most animate noun in a sentence will occur first. It can take time for a native English speaker to put this concept into action as you have to distinguish the animacy of a noun when placing it in a sentence. This is called compounding which just means sticking words together. I am studying Navajo because I enjoy learning about Native American history and cultures.
Navajo is the most spoken of all the native languages, and plus out of respect I'm on their land. Get started. Why are you learning Navajo? February 9, February 20, February 10, Hmm88 Plus. March 7, March 1, March 5, April 13,
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