din neh biz awd yeh nh dahz bah ig gee

In Remembrance of Navajo Code Talker Albert Smith, below is our post for ‘Navajo Code Talker’ from August 14.

Today is a special day: National Navajo Code Talkers’ Day. As such, we bring you the Navajo word for ‘Navajo Code Talkers.’

• Diné Bizaad - Navajo, it’s (their) language
• yee - with it, or by means of it
• nidaazbaa’ - plural for of ‘he/she/it went to war’
• -ígíí - particle that converts the verb nidaabaa’ and the phrase as a whole into a noun, or adverbial/adjectival component.

NavajoWOTD.com is, in large part, an homage to the late Keith Little, who passed a month before we began posting our words. It remains, now, a tribute to the Speakers who leave behind a valuable lesson: that our Native languages are powerful tools for shaping our identity as a People.

The Navajo Code Talkers’ service during WWII and afterwards invigorated the movement to preserve the Navajo language in a time when off-reservation boarding schools embraced a brutal policy of banning students from speaking their native language.

The Navajo language and the Code derived from it was a powerful weapon in the Second World War. But that same code became a saving grace for the language as a whole.

Ahéhee’ shicheii, hagoónee’.