Diné Bizaad (Navajo)

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Diné Bizaad (ISO 639-3: nav), or Navajo, has the largest number of speakers of any Native language north of Mexico. Diné territory is north-eastern Arizona, north-western New Mexico, and south-eastern Utah. The orthography follows the Athapaskan tradition, with the lateral fricative slash-l ⟨ł⟩, the nasal vowel hook ⟨ą⟩, and high tone marked by an acute accent ⟨á⟩.

There are several Roman Orthography conventions on this site that may require further explanation. On the charts below, there is lots of phonetic terminology that may not be familiar to everyone.

Roman Orthography: Consonants

	bilabial	alveolar	alveolar affricate	lateral	palato-alveolar	palatal	velar	velar rounded	glottal
voiceless stop	b	d	dz	dl	j		g		’
aspirated stop		t	ts	tł	ch		k	kw
ejective stop		t’	ts’	tł’	ch’		k’
voiced fricative			z	ł	zh		gh
voiceless fricative			s		sh		x		h
nasal	m	n
resonant				l		y		w
voiceless resonant								hw

Roman Orthography: Vowels

	front	central	back
high	i - ii
mid	e - ee		o - oo
low		a - aa

Notes

• Long vowels are written double.
• High tone is indicated with an acute accent ⟨á⟩. Low tone is unmarked. The nasal consonant /n/ can also carry high or low tone: high tone ⟨ń⟩.
• Contour tones over long vowels are considered (orthographically at least) a juxtaposition of two short vowels of different tones:
• Rising: ⟨aá⟩
• Falling: ⟨áa⟩
• Nasal vowels are indicated with an ogonek accent ⟨ą⟩, often called a “nasal hook”.
• Combinations of high tone and nasal diacritics are common on a single vowel: ⟨ą́⟩