Kiowa County Public Library District

After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is a useless language, Ned Begay and other Navajo men are recruited by the Marines to become Code Talkers, sending messages during World War II in their native tongue.

The verb is the most important and the most complex part of Navajo grammar. For the first time, students and scholars interested in the Navajo language have a book that presents the verb system in a step-by-step and thorough fashion. By providing easy-to-follow descriptions with abundant examples, this book unravels the complexity of Navajo and reveals its expressiveness.In Navajo, numerous prefixes combine with verb roots to form single words that,...

During World War II, as the Japanese were breaking American codes as quickly as they could be devised, a small group of Navajo Indian Marines provided their country with its only totally secure cryptogram. Recruited from the vast reaches of the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico, from solitary and traditional lives, the young Navajo men who made up the code talkers were present at some of the Pacific Theatre?s bloodiest battles. They spoke...

"Discusses the heroic actions and experiences of the Navajo code talkers and the impact they made during times of war and conflict"--

"...addresses the inadequacy of literal translation when working with idioms by offering interpretations based on the general meaning of a phrase rather than the individual words that comprise the expressions"--Cover.

During World War II, the U.S. Marine Corps recruited Navajo Indians for duty as communication specialists. The Navajos developed a special voice code based on the Navajo language to transmit battlefield messages during the Pacific campaign. This code was never broken by the Japanese.