Navajo phonology facts for kids

The Navajo language has its own special way of making sounds. This is called its phonology. The sounds of Navajo are closely linked to how its words are built (its morphology). For example, many different consonant sounds are only found at the beginning of word parts. At the end of word parts or in prefixes (small parts added to the beginning of words), there are fewer different sounds. The same goes for vowel sounds.

Navajo is like many other Athabaskan languages because it has lots of sounds made with the front part of your tongue (called "coronal" sounds). It has fewer sounds made with your lips.

Navajo Consonants: The Building Blocks of Sound

Navajo has many consonant sounds. Some are similar to English, but others are quite different!

How Navajo Consonants Sound

Navajo consonants are often held longer than English consonants. For example, a "plain" stop sound (like 't') is held longer. If it has a puff of air (aspirated), that puff is longer. If it's a combination sound (affricate), the "hissing" part is longer.

Stop and Combo Sounds

Most Navajo stop and affricate sounds have three different ways they can be made:

• Unaspirated: Like the 'p' in 'spin' (no puff of air).
• Aspirated: Like the 'p' in 'pat' (with a puff of air).
• Ejective: Made with a quick pop of air from your throat, like a tiny explosion!

The sounds made with your lips, like /p/ and /m/, are rare in Navajo words. Many of the unique sounds are made with the tip or middle of your tongue.

Flowing Sounds

Navajo has "flowing" sounds, which are like the 's' or 'z' in English. They are often louder and more "noisy" than English ones.

Some of these flowing sounds are called "voiced" (meaning your vocal cords vibrate) and some are "voiceless" (no vibration). But in Navajo, the difference isn't always about voice. Sometimes, the "voiceless" sounds are just held longer than the "voiced" ones.

Sounds with a Throat Squeeze

Some Navajo consonants involve a quick squeeze in your throat, like the sound you make when you say "uh-oh" (that's a glottal stop). These include the glottal stop itself, ejective stops, and some nasal sounds.

Rounded Consonants

Some consonants are made with your lips rounded, like when you say "whoa." These sounds often appear before the vowel /o/, but they can also appear before other vowels, making a difference in meaning.

How Sounds Change: Voicing Assimilation

In Navajo, some flowing sounds (like /z/, /l/, /ʒ/, /ɣ/) can change from "voiced" (vocal cords vibrating) to "voiceless" (no vibration). This happens depending on the sounds around them.

• If a voiceless consonant comes before them, they become voiceless.
• If voiced sounds are around them (like between two vowels), they stay voiced.

For example, the word for 'spit it out' can be [zóːh] or [sóːh]. The 'z' or 's' sound changes based on what comes before it. This is a common pattern in Navajo.

How Sounds Change: D-Effect

Navajo has a special sound change called "d-effect." This is when a consonant at the beginning of a verb part gets "strengthened" or changed. This happens when it follows certain prefixes (small parts added to the beginning of words), especially the /-t-/ prefix.

For example, if you have a /t-/ prefix and a /-Z/ sound, they combine to make a /-ts/ sound. It's like the 't' sound gets absorbed and changes the next sound. This helps Navajo avoid having too many consonants clustered together.

Here are some examples of how sounds change with d-effect:

• t- + -Z can become -ts (like in chʼénádzid 'he woke up')
• t- + -L can become -tl (like in ánéinidlaa 'you repaired it')
• t- + -m can become -mʼ (like in yiiʼmas 'we two are rolling along')

Navajo Vowels: The Heart of the Sound

Navajo has four main vowel sounds: [i], [e], [o], and [ɑ]. These are like the 'ee' in 'see', 'e' in 'bed', 'o' in 'go', and 'a' in 'father'.

What makes Navajo vowels special is that they can also be:

• Long or Short: Like the difference between 'ee' in 'sheep' (long) and 'i' in 'ship' (short).
• Oral or Nasal: Oral means air comes out of your mouth. Nasal means air comes out of your nose too, like the 'an' in French 'bon'.

This means there are 16 different vowel sounds in Navajo!

Even though we write them with the same letter, a long 'i' (ii) sounds a bit different from a short 'i' (i). The short 'i' is actually pronounced a little lower.

Navajo Tones: Pitch Matters!

Navajo is a tonal language. This means that the pitch of your voice when you say a word can change its meaning! Navajo has two main tones:

• High tone: Marked with an accent mark over the vowel, like ⟨á⟩.
• Low tone: Usually not marked, like ⟨a⟩.

So, a word like kǫ́ (with a high tone) means 'fire', but if it had a low tone, it would mean something else!

Sometimes, long vowels can have a changing tone, like a falling tone (⟨áa⟩) or a rising tone (⟨aá⟩). This often happens in words that came from other languages, like béeso ('money'), which came from the Spanish word peso.

Even the letter 'n' can carry a tone if it acts like a vowel. It's marked with an accent for high tone (⟨ń⟩) and left unmarked for low tone (⟨n⟩).

Syllables in Navajo Words

A syllable is a part of a word that has one vowel sound. In Navajo, most word parts (called "stems") follow a pattern:

• They start with a consonant (C).
• Then they have a vowel (V), which can be short or long.
• They might end with another consonant (C).
• They can also have a high tone.

So, a common Navajo syllable looks like: C V (long or short) (C) (Tone).

Peg Elements: Making Words Complete

In Navajo, every verb (action word) needs to have at least two syllables. Sometimes, a verb might only have one main syllable or a prefix that isn't a full syllable. When this happens, Navajo adds a special, meaningless prefix to the verb to make sure it has two syllables. This is called a "peg element."

For example, the verb for "she/he/they is/are crying" is just -cha. But because it needs two syllables, a "yi-" peg element is added, making it yicha. The sound of the peg element can change too: it's 'y' before 'i', 'w' before 'o', and 'gh' before 'a'.

Images for kids

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  Navajo vowel sounds, showing how they are made in the mouth.

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  Another chart showing Navajo vowel sounds.

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  A diagram of Navajo vowel sounds based on scientific measurements.