Navajo

• Navaho

Borrowed from Spanish navajo, from Tewa navahu (“field adjoining an arroyo”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈnæ.və.həʊ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈnæ.və.hoʊ/, /ˈnɑ.və.hoʊ/, (contracted) /ˈnæ.voʊ/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: Na‧va‧jo

Navajo (plural Navajo or Navajos or Navajoes)

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

   Synonym: (derogatory) Tavasuh

   • 2019 January 16, Eric Levenson, “Alfred Newman, one of the last remaining Navajo Code Talkers, dies at 94”, in CNN‎^[1]:

     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.

Navajo

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).
   • 2023 December 30, Daniel W. Hieber, “Why I hate conlangs”, in Linguistic Discovery‎^[2], archived from the original on 24 May 2024:

     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.

2. An Amerindian people who traditionally speak the Navajo language.
   • 2019 January 16, Eric Levenson, “Alfred Newman, one of the last remaining Navajo Code Talkers, dies at 94”, in CNN‎^[3]:

     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.

• Athabaskan languages on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Southern Athabaskan languages on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Na-Dené languages on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Wiktionary’s coverage of Navajo terms

• ISO 639-1 code nv, ISO 639-3 code nav (SIL)
• Ethnologue entry for Navajo, nav ⁠