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Navajo

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breadboy
Newbie
United States
Joined 6850 days ago

22 posts - 23 votes

 
 Message 1 of 13
26 June 2005 at 2:26am | IP Logged 
In fact, its childs play compared to one in particular: Navajo. This may be the single hardest thing to comprehend I've ever seen.

Here's a quick little clip, notice how it has so many marks it's barely readable.

Ashiiké t'óó diigis léi' tółikaní ła' ádiilnííł dóó nihaa nahidoonih níigo yee hodeez'ą́ jiní. Áko t'áá ał'ąą ch'il na'atł'o'ii k'iidiilá dóó hááhgóóshį́į́ yinaalnishgo t'áá áłah ch'il na'atł'o'ii néineest'ą́ jiní. Áádóó tółikaní áyiilaago t'áá bíhígíí t'áá ał'ąą tł'ízíkágí yii' haidééłbįįd jiní. "Háadida díí tółikaní yígíí doo ła' aha'diidził da," níigo aha'deet'ą́ jiní'. Áádóó baa nahidoonih biniiyé kintahgóó dah yidiiłjid jiní'....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_language

Edited by breadboy on 26 June 2005 at 5:21pm

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Nephilim
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
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363 posts - 368 votes 
Speaks: English*, Polish

 
 Message 2 of 13
26 June 2005 at 3:07am | IP Logged 
how does one, I wonder, pronounce the squares?
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vincenthychow
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Hong Kong
Joined 6863 days ago

136 posts - 145 votes 
Speaks: Cantonese, English, GermanB1, Japanese
Studies: French

 
 Message 3 of 13
26 June 2005 at 3:28am | IP Logged 
How can I listen to it? It looks interesting.
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Raistlin Majere
Trilingual Hexaglot
Senior Member
Spain
uciprotour-cycling.c
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7 sounds
Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German
Studies: Swedish

 
 Message 4 of 13
26 June 2005 at 4:18am | IP Logged 
Breadboy, I have had a look at it in Wikipedia...I agree completely. :|
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Nephilim
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
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363 posts - 368 votes 
Speaks: English*, Polish

 
 Message 5 of 13
26 June 2005 at 5:52am | IP Logged 
Wonder if anyone else on this site has tried to learn Navajo. Does look tough, I have to admit.
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laxxy
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
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Speaks: Ukrainian, Russian*, English
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 6 of 13
26 June 2005 at 8:45am | IP Logged 
Well, Vietnamese looks similar with a lot of marks. It looks like they just mark the tones, which Chinese also has.
It may very well be a very difficult language (although it probably depends on where you are coming from), but it is hard to tell from just looking at a sample text.

In some cases the marks really help. For example: I often have to read or write transliterated Russian and Ukrainian. Typically, people use letter combinations to represent cyrillic letters that do not have an equivalent in English (e.g. "shch" for "щ"). I kinda got accustomed to this, but it is still a lot less convenient to read than Cyrillic.
However a transliteration with diacritical marks (like this) is a great deal easier to read without any study, about as easy as cyrillic. Of course no one is ever going to use it seriously, but it was still interesting to look at.
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breadboy
Newbie
United States
Joined 6850 days ago

22 posts - 23 votes

 
 Message 7 of 13
26 June 2005 at 5:29pm | IP Logged 
As easy as it may look, here is why it's the hardest language period.

Typologically, Navajo is an agglutinating, polysynthetic head-marking language, but many of its affixes combine into barely recognizable 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).

Many concepts that exist as nouns in other languages exist as verbs in Navajo. Noun phrases exist in Navajo outside of syntactic space: that is, they are not necessary for forming a grammatical sentence and exist purely for semantical reasons. Noun phrases are unique in Navajo because they lie in the adjunction domain, rather than in A or A’ positions, and do not receive overt case marking.

Navajo is a "verb-heavy" language — it has a great preponderance of verbs but relatively few nouns. In addition to verbs and nouns, Navajo has other elements such as pronouns, clitics of various functions, demonstratives, numerals, postpositions, adverbs, and conjunctions, among others. Harry Hoijer grouped all of the above into a word-class which he called particles (i.e., Navajo would then have verbs, nouns, and particles). There is nothing that corresponds to what are called adjectives in English — this adjectival function being provided by verbs.

The key element in Navajo is the verb and is notoriously complex. Some noun meanings are provided by verbs, as in Hoozdo 'Phoenix, Arizona' (lit., 'the place is hot') and ch'é'étiin 'doorway' (lit., 'something has a path horizontally out'). Many complex nouns are derived from nominalized verbs as well, as in ná'oolkiłí 'clock' (lit., 'one that is moved slowly in a circle') and chidí naa'na'í bee'eldllhtsoh bikáá' dah naaznilígíí 'army tank' (lit., 'a car that they sit up on top of that crawls around with a big thing with which an explosion is made').

Yes, thats right, the word for tank is literally 22 words long.

To compare with English, Navajo has no single verb that corresponds to the English word give. In order to say the equivalent of Give me some hay!, the Navajo verb níłjool (NCM) must be used, while for Give me a cigarette! the verb nítįįh (SSO) must be used. The English verb give is expressed by eleven different verbs in Navajo, depending on the characteristics of the given object.

Like most Athabaskan languages, Southern Athabaskan languages show various levels of animacy in its grammar, with certain nouns taking specific verb forms according to their rank in this animacy hierarchy. For instance, Navajo nouns can be ranked by animacy on a continuum from most animate (a human being) to least animate (an abstraction) (Young & Morgan 1987: 65–66).

Generally, the most animate noun in a sentence must occur first while the noun with lesser animacy occurs second. If both nouns are equal in animacy, then either noun may occur in the first position.


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breadboy
Newbie
United States
Joined 6850 days ago

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 Message 8 of 13
26 June 2005 at 5:32pm | IP Logged 
Does anyone know anything that can compare with my previous post?


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