Indigenous languages · in preparation
Diné Bizaad — the Navajo Language
The People's language — the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the United States, and the charge of the largest Indigenous nation's own schools.
The language
Diné Bizaad — “the People's language” — is a tonal Southern Athabaskan language, the southern kin of the Dene languages of the North, carried into the Southwest by the Diné's ancestors centuries ago. Its homeland is Dinétah, the Navajo Nation: more than 27,000 square miles across Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, with roughly 400,000 enrolled citizens. Over 161,000 people speak the language — more than speak any other Indigenous language in the United States.
The honest wound stands inside the big number: in 1980 about 93% of Navajos spoke Diné Bizaad; by 2010 about 51% did, and UNESCO now counts the language as vulnerable. Children once punished for speaking it grew up afraid to pass it on. In the Second World War this same language became the United States Marine Corps' unbreakable battlefield code — the only code of that war never broken — carried by the Diné Code Talkers whom the Nation honours at Window Rock. A complete Bible in Diné Bizaad has stood in the people's hands for decades, and its readers guard it jealously.
Their own teachers
Diné education is sovereign in law. The Navajo Nation Department of Diné Education, under the Navajo Sovereignty in Education Act of 2005, sets the Nation's own standards and certifies its own language teachers. Diné College — founded in 1968, the first tribally controlled college in the United States — grants a B.A. in Diné Studies. Navajo Technical University grants bachelor's and master's degrees in Diné Culture, Language & Leadership. And Rock Point Community School has taught bilingually, Navajo first, since 1967.
Learn Diné Bizaad in writing
This room opens first for learning to read and write. Nothing here is ours: the alphabet is the standard Diné orthography taught in the Nation's own colleges, the lessons are Diné institutions' own, and the practice sheet holds only the alphabet's letters, for copying by hand.
The writing
The Diné alphabet (standard orthography)
The standard Diné Bizaad orthography (Young & Morgan), as presented for Diné language courses in Northern Arizona University's Navajo Language Guide and taught at Diné College and Navajo Technical University.
The vowels — za'áán: four sounds, each written plain, with high tone (á), nasal (ą — the hook beneath), nasal with high tone (ą́), and long (doubled), in every combination
- a
- á
- ą
- ą́
- aa
- áá
- ąą
- ą́ą́
- e
- é
- ę
- ę́
- ee
- éé
- ęę
- ę́ę́
- i
- í
- į
- į́
- ii
- íí
- įį
- į́į́
- o
- ó
- ǫ
- ǫ́
- oo
- óó
- ǫǫ
- ǫ́ǫ́
The consonants — zaatł'ah
- b
- ch
- ch'
- d
- dl
- dz
- g
- gh
- h
- x
- hw
- j
- k
- k'
- kw
- '
- l
- ł
- m
- n
- s
- sh
- t
- t'
- tł
- tł'
- ts
- ts'
- w
- y
- z
- zh
The mark ' is the glottal stop — a catch in the throat. After k, t, tł, ts, and ch it makes the popped (ejective) sounds k', t', tł', ts', ch'.
The letter x is the h-sound as it is written after s and sh. The letter ł is the whispered l, made with the tongue set for l and the breath escaping at the sides.
Tone, nasality, and length all change meaning in Diné Bizaad, so the marks are part of the letters, never decoration.
Practice the characters
Print the practice sheet and copy the characters by hand. The sheet holds only the characters of the chart above — no words, nothing added. Printable practice sheet — the Diné alphabet
Learn from their own teachers
- Diné College — Navajo Language Immersion Institute — the Navajo Nation's own college, Tsaile — immersion classes for students and adult learners
- Navajo Technical University — Diné Culture, Language & Leadership (degree sheet, PDF) — the Nation's university, Crownpoint — its Diné degree includes Beginning Navajo Reading and Writing (NAVA 1130) and a writing ladder to the 400 level
- Navajo Language Guide — the alphabet with its sounds — Northern Arizona University's guide for Diné language courses, presenting the za'áán and zaatł'ah
The writing is the people's own gift to their learners. The words of the books wait for the partnership.
Hear Diné Bizaad today
These voices are the Diné people's own, published by their own teachers and stations. The link takes you to their house; nothing of their voice is copied here.
- KTNN 660 AM — The Voice of the Navajo Nation — the Nation's own 50,000-watt station, broadcasting in Diné Bizaad and English since 1986, webcast from Window Rock
- KNDN 960 AM — All Navajo All The Time — daily Navajo news, information and music, streamed from the station's own site
- Navajo Word of the Day — hundreds of words and phrases, each with a real speaker's recording and a pronunciation guide
An open invitation
This door stands open by invitation. If you are a speaker, teacher, or language keeper of Diné Bizaad, or you carry its authority, this programme asks to work with you — to be guided, corrected, and reviewed by the people whose language this is. In this collection the holy names are never invented: what the Creator is called in a language is for its own speakers to give, and the spelling of every text is theirs to settle. Write to the publisher at [email protected].
The first door is the Navajo Nation Department of Diné Education and the Navajo Nation Board of Education; the Nation's own colleges are its higher-education arms.
To hear it
When Diné Bizaad opens here, it will be heard as well as read — in its own voice, spoken and recorded by Diné speakers. Until then this door is silent in Navajo on purpose: the first voice heard in it should be the people's own.
The other doors
- ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ — the Inuit languages
- ᏣᎳᎩ — Cherokee
- Kanien'kéha — Mohawk
- Michif — Métis
- Dene
- Diné Bizaad — Navajo
- Dakȟótiyapi — Dakota
- Lakȟótiyapi — Lakota
- Anishinaabemowin — Anishinaabe
- Indigenous languages — the doorway overview
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