![]() ![]() Navajo is an Athabaskan language Navajo and Apache languages make up the southernmost branch of the family. The Navajo refer to themselves as the Diné ('People'), with their language known as Diné bizaad ('People's language') or Naabeehó bizaad. The alternative spelling Navaho is considered antiquated even anthropologist Berard Haile spelled it with a "j" in accordance with contemporary usage despite his personal objections. It was borrowed into Spanish to refer to an area of present-day northwestern New Mexico, and later into English for the Navajo tribe and their language. The word Navajo is an exonym: it comes from the Tewa word Navahu, which combines the roots nava ('field') and hu ('valley') to mean 'large field'. Most Navajo vocabulary is Athabaskan in origin, as the language has been conservative with loanwords due to its highly complex noun morphology. The language's orthography, which was developed in the late 1930s, is based on the Latin script. Verbs are conjugated for aspect and mood, and given affixes for the person and number of both subjects and objects, as well as a host of other variables. Basic word order is subject–object–verb, though it is highly flexible to pragmatic factors. ![]() Navajo has both agglutinative and fusional elements: it uses affixes to modify verbs, and nouns are typically created from multiple morphemes, but in both cases these morphemes are fused irregularly and beyond easy recognition. Its four basic vowel qualities are distinguished for nasality, length, and tone. Navajo has a fairly large phoneme inventory, including several consonants that are not found in English. The United States in World War II used the Navajo language to develop a system of code talkers to relay messages that could not be cracked. The 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. ![]() It is one of the most widely spoken Native American languages and is most widely spoken north of the Mexico–United States border, with almost 170,000 Americans speaking Navajo at home as of 2011. Navajo is spoken primarily in the Southwestern United States, especially on the Navajo Nation. Navajo or Navaho ( / ˈ n æ v ə h oʊ, ˈ n ɑː-/ Navajo: Diné bizaad or Naabeehó bizaad ) is a Southern Athabaskan language of the Na-Dené family, through which it is related to languages spoken across the western areas of North America. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Navajo is classified as Vulnerable by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger ![]()
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