What is the Navajo language?
Q: What is the Navajo language?
A: The Navajo language is a Southern Athabaskan language spoken in the United States, specifically in the Navajo Nation (in the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah).
Q: How widely is Navajo spoken in the United States?
A: Navajo 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.
Q: Why is Navajo famous?
A: Navajo is famous for being used by the Navajo Code Talkers during World War II (Pacific Theater).
Q: What makes Navajo difficult for English speakers to learn?
A: Navajo 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.
Q: How are new words made in Navajo?
A: 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.
Q: How are sentences arranged in Navajo?
A: In Navajo, sentences are arranged as subject-object-verb although they can be arranged in other ways too.
Q: How is the Navajo language written?
A: 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.
