Sacred Name Collection — Education

Indigenous languages in this school · in preparation

Diné Bizaad — the Navajo Language

The People's language — the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the United States, and the charge of the largest Indigenous nation's own schools.

In preparation — in partnership with the Diné (Navajo) Nation's own speakers. The goal is the whole collection in Diné Bizaad: every book to read and to hear, here and in the school. Nothing is published until they have guided and reviewed it.

The language

Diné Bizaad — “the People's language” — is a tonal Southern Athabaskan language, the southern kin of the Dene languages of the North, carried into the Southwest by the Diné's ancestors centuries ago. Its homeland is Dinétah, the Navajo Nation: more than 27,000 square miles across Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, with roughly 400,000 enrolled citizens. Over 161,000 people speak the language — more than speak any other Indigenous language in the United States.

The honest wound stands inside the big number: in 1980 about 93% of Navajos spoke Diné Bizaad; by 2010 about 51% did, and UNESCO now counts the language as vulnerable. Children once punished for speaking it grew up afraid to pass it on. In the Second World War this same language became the United States Marine Corps' unbreakable battlefield code — the only code of that war never broken — carried by the Diné Code Talkers whom the Nation honours at Window Rock. A complete Bible in Diné Bizaad has stood in the people's hands for decades, and its readers guard it jealously.

In this school

In this school, the place of Diné Bizaad is being prepared on the same terms as the library's: no Navajo lesson, reader, or word list will be made here until Diné educators have guided and reviewed it. When the door opens, it opens whole — every level of learning, to read and to hear, in the school as in the library.

Their own schools and teachers

Learn Diné Bizaad in writing

This room opens first for learning to read and write. Nothing here is ours: the alphabet is the standard Diné orthography taught in the Nation's own colleges, the lessons are Diné institutions' own, and the practice sheet holds only the alphabet's letters, for copying by hand.

The writing

The Diné alphabet (standard orthography)

The standard Diné Bizaad orthography (Young & Morgan), as presented for Diné language courses in Northern Arizona University's Navajo Language Guide and taught at Diné College and Navajo Technical University.

The vowels — za'áán: four sounds, each written plain, with high tone (á), nasal (ą — the hook beneath), nasal with high tone (ą́), and long (doubled), in every combination

The consonants — zaatł'ah

The mark ' is the glottal stop — a catch in the throat. After k, t, tł, ts, and ch it makes the popped (ejective) sounds k', t', tł', ts', ch'.

The letter x is the h-sound as it is written after s and sh. The letter ł is the whispered l, made with the tongue set for l and the breath escaping at the sides.

Tone, nasality, and length all change meaning in Diné Bizaad, so the marks are part of the letters, never decoration.

Practice the characters

Print the practice sheet and copy the characters by hand. The sheet holds only the characters of the chart above — no words, nothing added. Printable practice sheet — the Diné alphabet

Learn from their own teachers

The writing is the people's own gift to their learners. The words of the books wait for the partnership.

Hear Diné Bizaad today

These voices are the Diné people's own, published by their own teachers and stations. The link takes you to their house; nothing of their voice is copied here.

Recovered reading

One recovered book stands here: GODESZIZ, the Book of Genesis in Navajo (Diné Bizaad), translated by Leonard P. Brink and printed by the American Bible Society in 1910 — complete as printed in 50 chapters and 1,530 verses. It is the people’s own book, recovered and set here exactly as it was printed — not a Sacred Name edition; the collection’s own edition in this language waits for the partnership. One limitation stands plainly on its page: the 1910 print’s dotted-letter diacritics are not reproduced — base letters only, nothing guessed. Read GODESZIZ — Genesis in Navajo (1910)

An open invitation

Teachers: if you teach Diné Bizaad — in a community school, an immersion nest, a college, or at a kitchen table — this school asks for your guidance before it makes a single lesson. In this collection the holy names are never invented: what the Creator is called in a language is for its own speakers to give, and the spelling of every text is theirs to settle. Write to the publisher at [email protected].

The first door is the Navajo Nation Department of Diné Education and the Navajo Nation Board of Education; the Nation's own colleges are its higher-education arms.

To hear it

When Diné Bizaad opens here, it will be heard as well as read — in its own voice, spoken and recorded by Diné speakers. Until then this door is silent in Navajo on purpose: the first voice heard in it should be the people's own.

The other doors

This doorway carries no advertising.