Persuasive Language

Persuasive Language What is language? What does it mean to people? Language is sacred to the Navajo people. Throughout Navajo history there are articles and statements that many of the youth don’t know the Navajo language because of the past history. It has not been a major issue in the Navajo Nations eye’s until the recent Presidential candidate, Chris Deschene was denied to run for Navajo Nation President because he could not speak Navajo fluently. Today majority of the Navajo people are not able to speak Navajo, let alone read and/or write it. Have education and economic status become more important than one’s native tongue? It seems like that is the status on the Navajo Nation. The Navajo language is a valuable tool that is needed
A lot of changes were made after WWII because of the Code Talkers; even today it is not forgotten by the Federal Government and the Navajo people. A lot of the Navajo men signed up for the war. “About 80% of Navajos were drafted for the army and most were rejected because of their inability to read/write in English. This brought about an increase in demand for more schools for Navajos” (Acrey).The Navajo language has been tested several times throughout history from our enemies. The Navajo Code Talkers were the main men behind the scenes that learned to translate information within a code of a code. For example, “Navy” was the message so the code used [tsah (Needle), wol-la-chee (Ant), ah-keh-di-glini (Victor), tsah-ah-dzoh (Yucca).] Using the first letter of the translation word, then combined together to get the message. Many other Navajo words were used to describe military objects such as “besh-lo” (iron fish) which meant “submarine”. The Navajo Code Talkers kept the code a secret until Sept. 17, 1992 when they were finally recognized at the Pentagon in Washington D.C. (Naval History & Heritage). Many of the interviews I conducted all mention the highly respect for the Navajo Code Talkers mentioning that Navajo language is powerful, there is no other language like Navajo. Even though the United States abused the Navajos and tried to dehumanize them, they still fought for their land. With this valor history of the Navajo language, it is needed to be kept and passed on for the future generations. It was also mentioned by Mitchell Blackhorse that if we were to be involved in another war that needed the Navajo Language, then it could be done because a lot of the available translation and “software” is not complete. We are still capable of using other words that are not