Language Miniatures 20: The Navajo language (original) (raw)

While struggling with the challenge of trying to learn a foreign language, it could be you've wondered "What is the hardest language to learn?" Japanese, for instance, feels more baffling to us than Spanish does. The answer is "No language is inherently any more difficult than any other, it just depends on which two languages you're comparing". Japanese children, after all, learn their mother tongue just as quickly and effortlessly as our kids learn English.

Some languages, though, are very alien indeed for someone who starts with English. Many of the ones that seem most unfamiliar to our ways of thinking are the American Indian languages, one of which is Navajo, spoken by some 150,000 Native Americans in our Southwest. When we look at the ways Navajo structures communication, we're truly in a completely different world. Navajo has a grammar that is about as far removed from English as any language gets.

• Navajo has a number of sounds that have no counterpart in English (they can only be written with unfamiliar symbols that would require explanation, so you'll have to take that on faith). The sound m hardly ever occurs and there is no r sound in the language at all, with the result that the word americano borrowed from Spanish centuries ago is reshaped into bilagaanaa. It is a tone language (see Miniature No. 3 ), though we won't be able to get to that, so the tone indications will be omitted here.

• Navajo has many thousands of nouns, but curiously enough only a hundred or so of them are `noun-only' words like our _ear_ or _sky_. Nearly all of them are mini-phrases, usually consisting of a verb which describes something the thing does. The word for `silver' is beesh ligai, which says `the metal that is being white', and `lemon' is ch'il litsooi dik'ozhigii, `the yellow plant that is being sour'. `Key' is bee 'aa nditihi, a phrase saying something like `the repeatedly-handled-slender-stiff-object one opens with'. (Keep that `slender-stiff' classification in mind for a moment, we're coming back to it).

• Navajo pronouns not only show three persons, but a fourth as well, indicating someone unknown or distant.

The only Navajo word most Americans know is hogan, a traditional Navajo-style six-sided house facing east. But in Navajo a lot of the simple nouns mentioned just above are what is known as possessed nouns, which simply means that the noun can never stand by itself, and -gan is one of them. It must always show who possesses it, in this language indicated by a prefix, for example shiGAN `my house', _biGAN_ `his house', nihiGAN `our house'. Since the abstract concept `house' doesn't exist in the Navajo speakers' world, the closest they come is the fourth-person `somebody's house', _hooGAN_, which we know as `hogan'.

• But Navajo verbs are far and away the most wondrous of all. Verbs come pretty close to being complete sentences in themselves, since everything in close association to the verb (persons, singular or plural, subjects, objects, adverbs, prepositions - and various other elements we wouldn't even think of -) are all strung along in front of the verb stem, which always brings up the rear. So alghadaniit'a is `we took it away from each other', _ninaadashinolteeh**_ is `you people are setting me down again', and _bida'didiidloh**_ `we will play a trick on him'.

• A verb doesn't have one single form (like to walk), but might have half a dozen shapes depending on whether the meaning is an action completed, incomplete, in progress, repeated, habitual, one-time-only, instantaneous, or wished.

• Some things about verbs are even more alien to us than that. When you want to talk about various ways of handling an object, you first need to choose the appropriate verb depending on the shape and consistency of that object. Look back at the literal translation of `key' above, and notice that it uses the verb stem that is appropriate to `slender stiff' objects. If I want to say I `_pick up_' or `lift up' something, I have to use _ndideesh_- for this particular meaning, and attach the verb stem appropriate to the consistency. The resulting verbs meaning `I pick/lift up the -' will look like this:

ndideeshtiil slender stiff object (key, pole)
ndideeshleel slender flexible object (branch, rope)
ndideesh**'aal** roundish or bulky object (bottle, rock)
ndideeshgheel compact and heavy (bundle, pack)
ndideeshjol non-compact or diffuse (wool, hay)
ndideeshteel something animate (child, dog)
ndideeshnil a few small objects (a couple of berries, nuts)
ndideeshjih a large number of small objects (a pile of berries, nuts)
ndideeshtsos something flexible and flat (blanket, piece of paper)
ndideeshjil something I carry on my back
ndideeshkaal anything in a vessel
ndideeshtloh mushy matter (mud)

`Pick up' is only one way of handling objects of these twelve different consistencies. We might also want to say `bring', `take', `hang up', `keep', `carry around', `turn over', some 28 of them in all, which multiplied by the above twelve choices makes well over 300 different verbs for handling things!

That was only a momentary glance at one of the 6000 languages in the world. Languages have endless different ways of organizing and structuring their communication, the way they talk about the world. But now another question comes up that is often asked: "Aren't there some things that are true of all languages in the world?" For more on this, see Miniature No. 22 .