Languagle #69: Navajo
Chʼééh déyá
Ch'ééh déyá
"I set out in vain. The Navajo way of saying "I'm tired.""
What it means
Literally "I set out in vain", the Navajo way of saying you are tired. The image is of starting out on something and getting nowhere.
How to say it
ch'ehh deh-YAH
Ch' is ch with a little pop. The accents mark a high pitch, and the doubled éé is long. The h at the end of chʼééh is breathy, like a sigh.
Word by word
- Chʼééh ch'ehh: in vain, without success
- déyá deh-YAH: I'm setting off, I'm going
Where it was written down
An everyday phrase rather than a proverb. Spelling from Wiktionary.
How to recognise Navajo
Navajo marks nasal vowels with a hook underneath (ą, ę, į, ǫ), high tones with an accent, and glottal stops with ʼ. It also uses ł. Polish has ą, ę and ł too, but never the accents on vowels or the ʼ, and Polish words are full of sz, cz and rz.
About the Navajo language
Navajo, or Diné bizaad, is an Athabaskan language spoken by around 170,000 people, mostly on the Navajo Nation in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. It has more speakers than any other Native American language in the United States. In the Second World War, Navajo Code Talkers used it to send US military messages that were never broken. It is a tonal language, written in the Latin alphabet with accents for high tone and hooks under vowels for nasal sounds.