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Chapter 1 Navajo and the Athabaskan Languages

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Chapter 1 Navajo and the Athabaskan Languages Chapter 1 Navajo and the Athabaskan Languages The Navajo language belongs to the Athabaskan/Dene language group. The Athabaskan language family stretches across Alaska and northwest Canada, with branches on the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington, and in the Southwest of the United States. Most Navajo people live in the southwestern parts of the United States in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. The Apaches in Arizona and New Mexico also belong to the Southern Athabaskans. The Navajo population today is approximately 300,000. The Navajo Nation covers approximately 25,500 square miles, about the size of West Virginia. 1. The Status of Navajo In 1951, Reichard recorded that Navajo was spoken by some 60,000 persons two-thirds of whom do not and perhaps never will speak English. We are at point where the opposite is true or worse. Estimates about the current number of speakers vary substantially, from 80,000 to 150,000 speakers. The Navajo language has a larger speech community than any other indigenous language in the United States, yet the language is in far greater danger than most linguists realize. Most Navajo men and women over the age of 50 speak Navajo fluently. Navajos in their thirties and forties have varying degrees of fluency. Some can understand the language fairly well but are not able to produce it accurately. There are fluent speakers who are in their twenties, but more know only a few common phrases. The vast majority of Navajos under age 20 speak only English. This decline has been well documented. Platero (2000) documents a sharp decline in the percentage of Navajo pre-school age children who speak Navajo, from 80% in his 1974 study, to about 45% in 1992. Unfortunately, subsequent research indicates that the situation was already far worse in the 1990s. Dr. Wayne Holm and Laura Wallace and Irene Silentman working as the Navajo Language Project in Window Rock, Arizona, worked for three years in the mid-1990’s documenting the abilities of public school students to speak Navajo, and monitoring the abilities of Navajo teachers to teach it. They found that there were very few communities with any Navajo-speaking children of pre-school age. Since the time of those studies, the status of Navajo has been monitored informally, but closely, by language teachers and community leaders. Increasingly, Navajo is not being passed to the youngest generation, and in fact, many Navajo people of parenting age have only a passing knowledge of the language. Today, it is likely that a very small percent of pre-school age children can speak Navajo, and the fight to maintain Navajo as a viable language is perceived by some as a losing battle. Three notable works have emerged recently on the complex bilingual situation in the Navajo Nation: House (2002), Schaengold 1 (2005), and Peterson (2006). The latter two are particularly interesting in their discussion of the mixed language employed by many younger Navajo people. High school Navajo teachers will find maybe one or two students in a classroom who are fluent in Navajo. Dr. Perkins has come across this in her own classroom during the five years she taught the Navajo Language in Flagstaff, one of the bordertowns of the Navajo Nation. Across the Navajo Nation, there are only a few monolingual Navajo speakers left today who are in their fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties. The bilingual speakers who were brought up with Navajo as their first language like Dr. Perkins are anywhere between a few in their twenties and ranging all the way up to the eighties and a few in their nineties. 2. The Athabaskan Language Family Harry Hoijer identified a total 38 Athabaskan languages. Twenty Athabaskan languages were spoken in Alaska and Northwestern Canada. A total of 11 Athabaskan languages were spoken in Pacific coast in southwestern Oregon and the neighboring portions of California. These are the languages Hoijer lists, with minor changes to reflect current preferences: Northwestern Athabaskan Languages: 1. Ahtna 2, Beaver 3. Carrier 4. Dene Sųłine 5. Dogrib 6. Han 7. Hare 8. Ingalik 9. Kaska 10. Koyukon 11. Kutchin 12. Nabesna 13. Sarsi 14. Sekani 15. Slave 16. Tagish 17. Tahltan 18. Dena’ina 19. Tanana 20. Tutchone Pacific Coast Athabaskan Languages: 1. Chasta Costa 2. Coquille 2 3. Euchre Creek 4. Galice 5. Hupa 6. Kato 7. Mattole 8. Nongatl 9. Tolowa 10. Umpqua 11. Wailaki Southwestern Athabaskan (Apachean) Languages: 1. Chiricahua 2. Jicarilla 3. Kiowa-Apache 4. Lipan 5. Mescalero 6. Navajo 7. San Carlos >> Western Apache: 1. White Mountain 2. Cibeque 3. San Carlos 4. Gila Apache 5. Tonto Yavapai/Apache Navajo is clearly in the Southwestern Branch of the family. 3 Names and Spelling A few words are in order on names and spelling. Navajo is not a Navajo word, and Athabaskan is not an Athabaskan word. The Navajo term for Navajo is t’aa din¢ (‘the people’) or just Din¢, and there is a growing trend to use this name in English. Navajo has also been spelled Navaho, however this is now strongly dispreferred. One difficulty posed by using Din¢ as the name in English is that the term used by many Athabaskan groups for themselves contains the consonants /d/ and /n/ with neutral vowels to round out the syllables. The result is that the names are difficult to distinguish, but it may be that the linguists and anthropologists have to cope. Athabaskan has been spelled in four ways: Athapaskan, Athapascan, Athabascan, and Athabaskan. Athapaskan is the preferred spelling in Canada, and Athabaskan is preferred in the United States south of Alaska, while Athabascan has recently been adopted in Alaska by the Tanana Chiefs. A growing number of people prefer the term Dene. 3 .
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