Understanding the Navajo Language & Providing Professional Navajo Interpreters and Translators
Global Interpreting understands the importance of working in the Navajo language. For over 10 years, Global Interpreting has worked with the Navajo language as well as hundreds of other from around the word. We are a one stop full language service provider. Offering Over the Phone, Video Remote, Face to Face, Transcription, Document and Website Translation in 150 languages including American Sign Language (ASL) nation and worldwide.
Navajo or Navaho (native name: Diné bizaad) is an Athabaskan language (of Na-Dené stock) spoken in the southwest United States by the Navajo people (Diné). It is geographically and linguistically one of the Southern Athabaskan languages (the majority of Athabaskan languages are spoken in northwest Canada and Alaska).
Navajo has more speakers than any other Native American language north of the U.S.-Mexico border, with 170,717 self-reported speakers in 2007, and this number has increased with time. During World War II, the language was used as a code in the Pacific War by bilingual Navajo code talkers to send secure military messages over radio. This had the advantage of being an extremely fast method of encrypted communication; the code was never broken by the Japanese.
The American Community Survey of 2007 reported 170,717 speakers of Navajo, making it the only Native American language to warrant a separate line in the statistical tables—the majority of these speakers living on the Navajo Nation. Of these, 2.9% were monolingual with no knowledge of English. The four metro- and micropolitan areas with the largest number of speakers were Farmington (16.5%), Gallup (12%), Flagstaff (10.3%), and Albuquerque (5.4%).
Navajo or Navaho (native name: Diné bizaad) is an Athabaskan language (of Na-Dené stock) spoken in the southwest United States by the Navajo people (Diné). It is geographically and linguistically one of the Southern Athabaskan languages (the majority of Athabaskan languages are spoken in northwest Canada and Alaska).
Navajo has more speakers than any other Native American language north of the U.S.-Mexico border, with 170,717 self-reported speakers in 2007, and this number has increased with time. During World War II, the language was used as a code in the Pacific War by bilingual Navajo code talkers to send secure military messages over radio. This had the advantage of being an extremely fast method of encrypted communication; the code was never broken by the Japanese.
The American Community Survey of 2007 reported 170,717 speakers of Navajo, making it the only Native American language to warrant a separate line in the statistical tables—the majority of these speakers living on the Navajo Nation. Of these, 2.9% were monolingual with no knowledge of English. The four metro- and micropolitan areas with the largest number of speakers were Farmington (16.5%), Gallup (12%), Flagstaff (10.3%), and Albuquerque (5.4%).
Grammar
Typologically, Navajo is an agglutinating, polysynthetic head-marking language, but many of its affixes combine into contractions more like fusional languages. The canonical word order of Navajo is SOV. Athabaskan words are modified primarily by prefixes, which is unusual for an SOV language (suffixes are expected).
Who are You Going to Trust with Vital Navajo Language Needs?
The Navajo language is an important language worldwide. It is vital to understand the general nature and specific idiosyncrasies of Navajo. For over 10 years Global Interpreting has provided outstanding Navajo translators, over the phone, face to face and conference interpreters nation and worldwide.