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DarkSteven -> RE: Code Talkers (5/23/2009 9:40:37 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BKSir
I was unaware that anyone had actually amassed that much of it in written form. Navajo is a beautiful language, and one that I wish I knew more of. I do have a little bit of a grasp on it, and thankfully an 'in' as it were, to learning more. B's family is from the Kiowa tribe, and from all I've been able to glean, their language is about an 85% match to Navajo. Of course such dialectual differences can make the difference between night and day, but nothing that can't be worked around.
Unfortunately both language are all but dead now, as are many other Native languages, which is (at least to me) a shame. I keep telling B. that he needs to get with his family and work on keeping the language alive. Possibly contact the Univ. here or somewhere, and their language department, and see about getting it professionally studied and preserved.
Languages, no matter which ones, are the most powerful tools, the most powerful weapons for good (and alas evil) that we as a species have.
Sorry about the bit of a tangent there... just something I'm very passionate about. I learned to love languages and their structures and forms and histories long ago, which is part of what lead me to my degrees in Sociology and Anthropology... which is why I'm a chef (come on, seriously, good luck finding a good job with those degrees). ;)
Here ya go, BK... a course in Navajo from my alma mater, UNM: http://www.gallup.unm.edu/20090129joekee.php
More: http://www.unm.edu/~market/cgi-bin/archives/003031.html
Another plug for UNM... Tony Hillerman, the author of the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee murder mysteries, which drew upon the Navajo culture, used to be a Journalism professor at UNM.
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