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Where to start with Navajo? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Rem Groupie United Kingdom Joined 3552 days ago 66 posts - 96 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Czech, French | Message 1 of 5 10 May 2015 at 5:45pm | IP Logged |
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Hi.
I was wondering whether anyone has any advice/recommendations for learning Navajo. I’m interested in learning it but the resources seem to be few and far between. :( Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Nieng Zhonghan Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Antarctica Joined 3466 days ago 108 posts - 315 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Japanese*, Spanish, Galician Studies: Finnish, Icelandic, Armenian, Mongolian Studies: Old English, Russian, English, German, Korean, Mandarin | Message 2 of 5 10 May 2015 at 9:51pm | IP Logged |
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There is no consensus regarding morphological typology of Navajo, so it won't make
sense to give you some examples on Navajo "comparing" with English as I wanted. In any case, I would recommend you paying an extra attention on the verbs because they are the most important parts on their sentences. For instance, numerous prefixes combine with verb roots to form single words that were mistranslated or not well translated in the books I owned. It took some time to figure out what the authors meant when they described some aspects because of the lack of explanation. For instance, the “continuative” and the “durative” differences were not well covered in my books. Locomotive verbs are by default considered “continuative” according to the latest works I have seen (2012?). On Dictionaries 1. Navajo-English Dictionary (Hippocrene Dictionary) 1994 This book could be a good complement to a collection of Navajo materials, but doesn't do much good on its own. This is a good acquisition if you already speak and read Navajo. It is definitely not intended for beginners. Note that there are different printings and the one I got is much better than the old or another version of the book I owned. In the “old” or the “weird” version, apparently the font is sometimes unintelligible. I am just being picky here. 2. The New Oxford Picture Dictionary: English-Navajo Editon (The New Oxford Picture Dictionary If you are a visual learner, this book might help you to learn some nouns; however, one of the main problems of the book I’d like to leave a comment here is regarding the applicability of certain nouns. For instance, why would I learn about sea-related words when it comes to the rural Navajo lands? It doesn’t seem to be useful. When considering some set of words that don’t apply for Navajo culture and most people’s, this book contains information that are definitely not the priority for a beginner student, unless you are going to discuss about Neptune in Navajo language with Navajo people when there are many other themes to discuss about. 3. Navajo/English Dictionary of Verbs (2006) by Alyse Neundorf, Robert W. Young I am sure this will be a very good complement since verbs are the most important part of the Navajo grammar in my opinion. I highly recommend it for anybody interested in grasping a better undestanding of the Navajo verb form. 4. A Navajo/English Bilingual Dictionary: Alchini Bi Naaltsoostsoh (2005) by Alyse Neundorf This dictionary is from the same author from above (3). There are Navajo names and some small pictures (white and black) since it was originally designed for children, though any adults can make a good use of this dictionary. 5. The English-Navajo Children's Picture Dictionary by Roman de los Santos. 6. http://www.alphadictionary.com/directory/Languages/North_Ame rican_Languages/Navajo/ Textbooks Diné Bizaad: Speak, Read, Write Navajo (2004) This is one of the few Navajo textbooks I liked. It was a really expensive for my little budget (for not very popular languages) since you have to purchase both textbooks and the audios separately. It doesn’t make sense to use this book without its audio (CDs). Breakthrough Navajo: An Introductory Course (1992) One of the worst courses I have seen. I would not purchase it if you have Diné’s book in the market. There are other textbooks available, but I haven't seen its contents. Reading The Hero Twins: A Navajo-English Story of the Monster Slayers Day and Night by Nedra Emery. Others I think you should take a look on: http://navajonow.com/ It is not being updated anymore, I think, but you can find there many links that are still working related to Navajo resources. It doesn’t make sense to copy and paste all of them here. I myself have used some of them and I would recommend them. http://www.language-archives.org/language/nav If you are interested in Linguistics, there are some articles on the website above. http://www.native-languages.org/navajo.htm It contains more links to Navajo. http://www.angelfire.com/nv/navaholang/index2.html This is all I can remember now. I remember that if you are in US, you can easily purchase books (bilingual) for children. I couldn't buy any of them because apparently the bookstore only sells within Europe or US, but I remember that I read copies of them. Good luck in your studies. Edited by Nieng Zhonghan on 11 May 2015 at 8:37pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | |
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5203 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 3 of 5 11 May 2015 at 12:14pm | IP Logged |
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I haven't really studied Navajo but I second Nieng Zhonghan, Diné Bizaad seems to be one of the only usable textbooks.
An amazing resource is Blair's Navaho Basic Course, which is an FSI-like Navajo course with plenty of execises. The main drawback is that audio is not online (at least it wasn't a couple of years ago). In order to get accustomed to the sound of Navajo, I found Lapahie sound dictionary invaluable. Don't forget to check the UNM Libraries Native American language children's books. It features around 80 children books in Navajo. There is surprisingly few regularly updated audio content online. An (almost) daily 10-min podcast can be downloaded here. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Rem Groupie United Kingdom Joined 3552 days ago 66 posts - 96 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Czech, French | Message 4 of 5 11 May 2015 at 7:58pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you both for your responses. :)
The Diné Bizaad; Speak, Read, Write Navajo textbook looks like it could be worth a try. Do you have any suggestions for where I might be able to buy the audios for it? I found the book easily enough but the audios seem to be another matter (I’m in the UK which probably doesn’t help). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6704 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 5 11 May 2015 at 8:19pm | IP Logged |
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Brian Loo gave several lectures on Native American languages at the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin last week, one of them was an introduction to Navajo. He can probably give you some suggestions. A search for brian loo navajo points you to appropriate channels.
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