Navajo: a tongue for the young (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

Navajo: a tongue for the young

By Alysa Landry The Daily Times
Posted: 06/04/2011 01:00:00 AM MDT
USA

FARMINGTON — Colleagues of Margaret Speas are accustomed to her
rattling off strings of Navajo words.

To them, working within the red brick walls of a century-old building
on the campus of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Speas is an
expert on the language.

Not true, Speas said during a phone interview Wednesday. Pronouncing
the high tones and glottal stops of the American Indian language allow
even the most novice speaker to impress in areas far from the
27,000-square-mile reservation, she said.

"I really don't like being thought of as an expert in Navajo," she
said. "So that can be awkward."
Speas, a specialist in syntactic theory in the university's
Linguistics Department, has studied the language for more than two
decades. Yet she's still a beginner, she said.

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