A war, the Navajo, and the language that saved America.
I'm the proud great-granddaughter, and niece of U.S. Marines. All my life I've taken an interest in the men and women that have fought and died in defense of their country, my country. In the fifth grade I first learned about the men of the 382nd Platoon, United States Marine Corps, from then on I've had a fascination with the men know as the Navajo code talkers.
Below is a music video about the Navajo Code Talkers, I'd skip to about the 30 sec mark, then pay attention!
Below is a music video about the Navajo Code Talkers, I'd skip to about the 30 sec mark, then pay attention!
As we begin our short journey into the world of oral knowledge I want to start with a look at the oral knowledge of the Navajo, and especially their alphabet-less language.
In class today we spent most of our time discussing the nature of language itself, its characteristics, and its role in the bigger world.
Dr. Peterson named six elements of language:
I'm going to zero in on three of those elements in this post, and maybe come back to the rest later. Or you could help me out?
First: Culture
Not only is culture significant to all languages, because it provides the context and backdrop for everything the people of a culture say, but in particular for the Code Talkers as their culture died they became the key to success. As the video stated their language, "that the church and boarding schools refused to teach" was so unknown to any beyond the tribes of the Navajo Nation that no one knew where to begin in looking to decode their messages. The official Navajo Code Talkers website records that only about 30 non-Navajo people could fluently speak the language, and those that could speak the language didn't know the meaning behind the words.
Second: Arbitrary
To those that didn't know the code the but did know that language the messages passed by the Code Talkers still made no sense because if you tell them "the tortoise is swimming", you have to wonder why they care to talk about what the animal life around them is doing.
Language is arbitrary. There is no natural way to connect meaning to words, our oral knowledge is that certain words simply have their meanings. Because the Code Talkers simply reassigned meanings to words, for much of their code, you couldn't decipher the meaning with out knowing the relationship.
Third: Productivity
The alphabet in English and other languages easily allows new words to take form with the rearranging of letters and sounds. Spelling Bees are much more difficult for the Navajo with a language that doesn't have an alphabet. Alphabet-less the Code talkers often resorted to spelling with words.
Productivity however isn't limited to creating new words, but new sentences as well. You can make a new sentence simply by varying the way way something or said, or the number of times a word is used. This is the productivity of language, and part of the endurance of language. If our language could not change then we would never be able to talk about what we found surfing on the internet.
In the end I'm grateful for a few brave men who served their country with their mother tongue, and the very nature of language that helped them to serve. How boring would the world be if our languages were static? Would that halt progression as a people, if we couldn't describe what we were doing?
I'm very excited to delve deeper into the culture of the Navajo that has existed for ages, and especially to explore their oral knowledge and institutions. Soon I'll put up a post similar to Emily's about the general Navajo culture, and my experiences with them.
In class today we spent most of our time discussing the nature of language itself, its characteristics, and its role in the bigger world.
Dr. Peterson named six elements of language:
- Arbitrary
- Culture
- Displacement
- Productive
- Discrete
- Specialization
I'm going to zero in on three of those elements in this post, and maybe come back to the rest later. Or you could help me out?
 |
| From Woody H1 |
Not only is culture significant to all languages, because it provides the context and backdrop for everything the people of a culture say, but in particular for the Code Talkers as their culture died they became the key to success. As the video stated their language, "that the church and boarding schools refused to teach" was so unknown to any beyond the tribes of the Navajo Nation that no one knew where to begin in looking to decode their messages. The official Navajo Code Talkers website records that only about 30 non-Navajo people could fluently speak the language, and those that could speak the language didn't know the meaning behind the words.
 |
| The tortoise is attacking?? From frefran. |
To those that didn't know the code the but did know that language the messages passed by the Code Talkers still made no sense because if you tell them "the tortoise is swimming", you have to wonder why they care to talk about what the animal life around them is doing.
Language is arbitrary. There is no natural way to connect meaning to words, our oral knowledge is that certain words simply have their meanings. Because the Code Talkers simply reassigned meanings to words, for much of their code, you couldn't decipher the meaning with out knowing the relationship.
Third: Productivity
The alphabet in English and other languages easily allows new words to take form with the rearranging of letters and sounds. Spelling Bees are much more difficult for the Navajo with a language that doesn't have an alphabet. Alphabet-less the Code talkers often resorted to spelling with words.
"English words that didn't have an associated term could be spelled out using Navajo words that represented letters of the alphabet. The selection of a given term was based on the first letter of the English meaning of the Navajo word. For instance, "Wo-La-Chee" means "ant," and would represent the letter "A". Other "A" words such as "be-la-sana" (apple), or "tse-nill" (ax), would also be substituted in order to eliminate excessive repetition, which might allow the code to be cracked."According the official site.
Productivity however isn't limited to creating new words, but new sentences as well. You can make a new sentence simply by varying the way way something or said, or the number of times a word is used. This is the productivity of language, and part of the endurance of language. If our language could not change then we would never be able to talk about what we found surfing on the internet.
In the end I'm grateful for a few brave men who served their country with their mother tongue, and the very nature of language that helped them to serve. How boring would the world be if our languages were static? Would that halt progression as a people, if we couldn't describe what we were doing?
I'm very excited to delve deeper into the culture of the Navajo that has existed for ages, and especially to explore their oral knowledge and institutions. Soon I'll put up a post similar to Emily's about the general Navajo culture, and my experiences with them.
Well done for tying this in to what we learned in class! It just solidified it a bit more in my brain. I was a little confused about the Navajo code, you didn't really tell us what it was or what it was used for. The video kind of explained it though.
ReplyDeleteI'm excited to hear about the folktales and stories that the Navajo people have held on to.
The Navajo Code Talkers is a really interesting topic, I can't wait to learn more about it. I liked that you tied in the productivity aspect of the Navajo language. It made the concept much more clear.
ReplyDeleteThanks for tying in what we talked about in class. It really helped to solidify the ideas in my mind. This post was really interesting to me, and I want to look into the other 3 elements as well.
ReplyDeleteEmily, I would like to direct you this site> for more information on the Talkers and their code. (I believe there is a link in the post). In short during WWII the Allies needed an unbreakable code, and the Navajo were asked to use their native language to create one, which they did successfully.
ReplyDelete