UNM alum contributes to Navajo language preservation

A University of New Mexico alumnus made it his goal to make the Navajo language easier to learn. Now, he's getting to see in real time how his efforts are impacting the community.

Lukas Denk's and Melvatha Chee's Navajo Corpus of Historical Narratives was recently published on UNM's digital repository. It was a project funded by the Center for Regional Studies. Denk was a graduate student studying linguistics when he pitched the idea of publishing a corpus.

A corpus is a digital resource for linguistics to gather language data that shows how native language speakers form sentences.

This Navajo Corpus is comprised of nine narratives written by various authors. These stories are comprised of historical events and traditional narratives that are important to the community. "I wanted to have a compilation of stories that represent the diversity of genres and story styles," Denk said.

Using the translation of the sentences in those narratives and a program called Flex, Denk worked with Professor Melvatha Chee to break down components of the words and translate them. Denk now works at Navajo Technical University and uses the corpus to teach Navajo students and teachers interested in learning. He said most of his students like using the corpus because it is like a math problem; it shows how to get to the result.

"It's a good resource because it's the first research for Navajo that has so much text that can break down words," Denk said. "Prior resources would only provide word-by-word translations but not break down each component of the word. Second language learners don't usually learn words by memorizing them; they want to know what makes that word look and sound that way."

A challenge with the language is that every verb has different rules in how they're expressed which is what sets Navajo apart from other languages. "The Navajo language has more resources than any other Native American language, so I didn't have to start from scratch," Denk said.

Denk began working on this as part of another project researching the Navajo language. It turned out he needed a corpus to do his research and decided to lead the project himself.

"My hope is that people can use it for not only research but for educational purposes and expand on it. This is the first version, but I've already received feedback from Navajo language speakers," Denk said. "I hope it can be accessible and something less intimidating for someone learning the language."

Denk encourages feedback on the publication. "Let me know if something has been misrepresented or if there's something incorrect. I want to make this a collaborative project," Denk said.