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- "Are you going to Shiprock?"
"Are you going to Shiprock?"
Translation:Daʼ Naatʼáanii Nééz góó diníyá?
89 Comments
Which app? I would like to to listen. This would be a perfect place for Duolingo to grab some Navajo grad students and offer them tuition help in exchange for recording the course material. Win-win for all of us. I'm rereading "The Blessing Way" and wanted to know a culture that thought like that. Wish i could find a Navajo student who would be interested in exchanging course help for typing papers or something.
KTNN FM 101.5/AM 660 is another Navajo Nation station. It's based in Tségháhoodzání (Window Rock) but you can tune into it all the way out to Joshua Tree in California. They have a bilingual broadcast for news but all the music I've heard is in Diné.
Station Site: http://www.ktnnonline.com/about.html
Livestream: https://streamdb6web.securenetsystems.net/v5/KTNN
And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Navajo may be a very good cheat sheet, with at least approximate comparisons to sounds in English. Unfortunately there's no audio on these Wikipedia sites so far, but listening to Navajo radio, this might help us get adept at distinguishing phonemes in actual speech. This should be a good FIRST STEP in learning Navajo, before we develop bad habits!
761
I understand the feeling... I am trying to keep going, slowly but steady. However, I really miss the audio, as I think it would help to go a little bit faster.
Yáʼátʼeeh! I think there are two question markers that I have seen from other site (www.NavajoWOTD.com), daʼ is used in the first part of the sentence, and yaʼ is used in the ending.
I hope it helps. :)
761
Ahéhee’ Diego! The link specific for this explanation: https://navajowotd.com/word/da-ya/
Ahéheeʼ Carla! I think the explanation is good. It seems the course only use daʼ, but I can see other Navajo texts using yaʼ and shaʼ (I am not really sure about the pronunciation, but perhaps Navajo people use a different spelling for the same sound, when learning at school, I think so), and I can appreciate the effort from non natives and natives to construct the grammar. It is also true that some old and wise keepers of Diné culture prefer the oral sources, and this is because they can argue that the pronunciation of some words has been changed in the time. This is also really interesting to me.
Keep walking in beauty! :)
818
Another question marker I am aware of is ísh, which goes at the end.
I remember my Navajo teacher asking us if we were ready by saying "k'adísh," which literally means "now?" (now + question).
Yáʼátʼééh! This is a link with the explanation and pronunciation.
https://navajowotd.com/word/da-ya/
I hope it helps. :)
214
Sometimes Duolingo has Nééz a separate word and capitalized and sometimes it is all in lower case letters at the end of the word for Ship rock. Any thoughts?
Thank you for creating this course. I stayed in Monument Valley and it would have come in handy then, but I am trying to learn a few words for my next visit to the Navajo Nation to search for my ancestors. Is there any web site where we can hear the pronunciation? Do the apostrophes indicate stress? Thanks so much again!
Consider yourself fortunate! : ) Seriously though, the Navajo lessons are just being developed and need our help by reporting (click on the little flag) anything that needs correcting. So I am very happy it has been made available even though audio and other future improvements have not yet been added. I did research to get some info on pronunciation and meaning of various markings. I found a few websites that had audio for a limited number of words. I'll be very happy when enough speakers can volunteer to make the audio a reality. But I know this will take time.
818
The hooks under the letters mean to nasalize the vowel. (Maybe like the difference between no and non in French? Sorry, my French is rusty. But I know the o in non is nasalized.)
The accents above the letters tell you which tone to use. Navajo has two tones, a high one and a low one. The high ones are marked with the acute accent.
415
I am not sure if this is an issue with me or the question. What is the difference between Naatʼáanii Nééz and Naatʼáaniinééz ? I swear earlier I could use them fairly interchangeably but now i sometimes get them wrong if i use one and not the other. I know this is in beta, but there aren't helpful lessons at the beginning of each lesson and I literally just started these lessons today with no prior knowledge of the language (i know this is my own doing and my own fault).