"My wartime experiences developing a code that utilized the Navajo language taught how important our Navajo culture is to our country. For me that is the central lesson: that diverse cultures can make a country richer and stronger."
~ Chester Nez
"My wartime experiences developing a code that utilized the Navajo language taught how important our Navajo culture is to our country. For me that is the central lesson: that diverse cultures can make a country richer and stronger."
~ Chester Nez
Navajo is an Athabaskan language, which is one of the largest families of indigenous languages in North America. Until recently it was not a written language. It is a tonal language, meaning there are different tones used like low, high, rising and falling.
"In a tonal language, pitch is used to distinguish words, just like consonants and vowels do. For example, in English the words 'boat' and 'coat' sound the same except for their first consonants. In a tonal language, two words might be distinguished only by having different tones in the same way 'boat' and 'coat' are only distinguished by their first consonants."
~ linguist Aaron Kaplan
Peter Nahaidinae Z, Joseph P. Gatewood, and Corporal Lloyd Oliver, U.S. Marine Corps, National Archives.
Images from Wikimedia commons.
The Navajo language did not adapt English words if there was not a Navajo word for something. For example, there is no Navajo word for "tank," so they used the word "tortoise."