More heroes leaving us.
Back in the 80s I spent a little time on the Rez near Shiprock, and met an older Navajo guy who couldn’t speak English. At the time I was really surprised that anyone born & raised in the US wouldn’t be able to speak English - kind of one of the reasons we have public education.
Anyway, I don’t think he was a code-talker because he wouldn’t have been able to translate.
Navajo is a very different language - they make some unique sounds that linguists in the 60s had no chance of representing using the western alphabet, so when you see written Navajo, there are some asterisks & other non-alpha symbols meant to mean very specific pronunciations.
Fun fact: there are about the same number of Navajos on planet Earth as there are Tongans.
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