Navajo

plural Navajos · plural Navajoes · alternative Navaho

1. A member of the Navajo people, currently the largest Native American tribe in North America.

   As a code talker, Newman was one of a group of Navajos who learned a secret, unbreakable language that was used to send information on tactics, troop movements and orders over the radio and telephone during WWII.

   2019 January 16, Eric Levenson, “Alfred Newman, one of the last remaining Navajo Code Talkers, dies at 94”, in CNN

   Synonyms: Tavasuh

alternative Navaho

1. An Apachean (Southern Athabaskan) language of the Athabascan language family belonging to the Na-Dené phylum. It is spoken by 149,000 people in the American Southwest (Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado).

   Endangered language communities would be thrilled with and proud of that kind of exposure for their language, like when Star Wars was dubbed into Navajo and Ojibwe.

   2023 December 30, Daniel W. Hieber, “Why I hate conlangs”, in Linguistic Discovery, archived from the original on 24 May 2024

2. An Amerindian people who traditionally speak the Navajo language.

   One of the last remaining members of the Navajo Code Talkers, who used their difficult-to-learn language to form an indecipherable code that helped the Allies win World War II, has died.

   2019 January 16, Eric Levenson, “Alfred Newman, one of the last remaining Navajo Code Talkers, dies at 94”, in CNN

   Synonyms: Dine, Diné, Dine, Diné, Navajo People

3. A surname.