Navajo or Navaho is an Athabaskan language spoken in the southwest United States by the Navajo people . It is geographically and linguistically one of the Southern Athabaskan languages (the majority of Athabaskan languages are spoken in northwest Canada and Alaska). Navajo claims more speakers than any other Native American or First Nation language north of the U.S.-Mexico border, with more than 140,000 native speakers, and this number has increased with time. During World War II, a code based on Navajo was used by code talkers to send secure military messages over radio.
The Navajo language is widely spoken by Navajos of all ages, with over half of the Navajo population speaking the Navajo language at home. Many parents still pass on the Navajo language to their children as a first language, and because of this, the Navajos are one of the very few Native American tribes that use the native language of their tribe as a form of everyday communication. However, the language is in decline, especially in urban areas outside of reservations, as more and more younger Navajos have started to shift to the English language. Even on the reservation, Census data indicate that between 1980 and 1990 the proportion of Navajos aged 5–17 who spoke only English rose from 12% to 28%, and by 2000, the figure reached 43%.[2]