Native American Language

As diverse and widespread as the Native American tribes and cultures have been for thousands of years they also each have their own form of Native American language. When European settlers first settled in America there were over one thousand dialects of Native American language that was spoken throughout the Americas. There are still many Native Languages that are spoken among tribes to this day but the majority of these tribes also speak English.

Many tribal reservations and cultural organizations try to keep the languages alive among their communities in order to help remember their past and ensure the future of their cultural Native languages. Many people that study linguistics try to understand many of these Native Languages as well and they work on putting these languages into writing to help better understand the dialect. There is no definitive proof of the exact origin of many of these languages or if they all branched off from one Ancestral language because they were never put into written form for thousands of years after they had been spoken. Some of these languages had similarities to others so linguistic experts made groupings based off of this.

One form of Native American language that became popular among the United States military during World War Two. There was a movie in recent years that was all about how this Native American language was used to communicate secretly on the battlefield. These Native American tribes had a language that was near impossible to decipher, especially since it was never written down. Indian code talkers were used in the war since the Japanese kept interpreting all their other signals, so the United States military brought in some Native American soldiers that spoke this Native American language. These Natives came from the tribes the Navajo Indians of the Southwest. Many Native American soldiers won awards for their heroic escapades during the war, especially the Navajo code talkers. These Native American soldiers were essential to help us win the war and to have helped build our country to what it is today. As time goes on more and more is being understood about the hundreds of Native Languages that are still being spoken today and also some of the dying languages that Native American linguistic experts are trying to put into written form and save them from extinction.



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