

Last Of The Navajo 'Code Talkers' Dies At 93 - pdevr
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/06/04/318873830/last-of-the-navajo-code-talkers-dies-at-93

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themodelplumber
Declassified in 1968! Wow. I guess they thought they might use that trick
again.

I remember reading that they had to develop ways of describing words that
didn't exist in Navajo, like "submarine," which became "iron fish." I'm
studying Gregg shorthand right now and have thought about this a lot, since
there are quite a few words that can't be found in existing word lists. Kind
of a fun challenge, but ideally you come up with something that somebody else
could figure out on their own while reading your shorthand. Even though the
Navajo were talking in code, things like "iron fish" turned out the same way--
easy to remember and easy to decipher if you knew the language, because at
that level, facilitating communication was more important than the overly
defensive word-guarding stuff.

~~~
sliverstorm
Isn't all declassification like that? They seem to have a required cooldown
period. After all, once you let the cat out of the bag you can't get it back
in- so what's the rush.

~~~
67726e
On the human side of things, I recall reading in a history of the code talkers
how several of them were unable to get a job for their skillset of operating
and working on radios directly as a result of the classified nature of their
work. Whereas your run-of-the-mill white GI, or in some cases non-code-talker
Najavo, could point out his work in the service your Navajo code-talker could
not.

~~~
pionar
Why are you comparing them to "run-of-the-mill white GI(s)"? What purpose does
this serve? For any person who works on classified projects in military
service, the person can't point out specifics of his work, whether Navajo or
not.

~~~
67726e
Do you have anything better to do than nit-pick my comment with your fucking
autistic response? Take the comment for the information it provides and run
with it.

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batbomb
I grew up in Farmington, NM, probably one of the few, if inly places you could
actually learn Navajo in public schools, in addition to hearing it in your
everyday life.

Even though I'm very familiar with the tones, stops, hard consonants and
cadence, it's still strange to go back and hear it.

Luckily, more than a few times, we had code talkers speak at our schools
growing up.

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jakub_g
I've learnt about navajo from the movie but haven't dug the topic since. Now
I've glanced at the wikipedia page on navajo and got extremely surprised
seeing "ł", "ą", "ę" and "ń" in navajo [1][2] - the letters I thought existed
only in Polish language (not counting cyryllic languages' equivalents).

Does anyone knows about some story behind that?

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_language](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_language)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_USA-
Navajo.svg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_USA-Navajo.svg)

~~~
fiddlosopher
All the vowels in Navajo can have a hook under them (indicated nasal tone) and
an acute accent above them (indicating higher pitch). The "ł" is not
pronounced as in Polish. It is a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative. Try to
pronounce l and s at the same time and you'll be in the right ball park.
Navajo vowels also come in long and short duration; a doubled vowel means
long. (I know all of this because I designed a font for Navajo in the early
90s, while working on the Navajo reservation. I don't know if it ever got much
use, though I once saw a children's book typeset in it. Most of my friends who
spoke Navajo did not read the language, probably because there wasn't enough
written in Navajo to make it worth while for those who had learned to speak it
growing up to learn to read it as well.)

Edit: I didn't comment on ń. According to "An Introduction to the Sound System
of Navajo," by Ken Hale and Lorraine Honie (MIT unpublished ms), "the
sequences /ní/ and /ni/, when occurring before consonants, are often
pronounced without the vowel; instead, the nasal becomes syllabic and carries
the tone originally carried by the vowel. When this happens, the tone mark is
transferred to the nasal -- thus /ní/ is written [ń]; in the case of low-toned
/ni/, a special tone mark [`] is used for the syllabic nasal..." I was excited
to find all of this unpublished material from the late Ken Hale here:
[http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tfernal1/nla/halearch/halea...](http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tfernal1/nla/halearch/halearch.htm)

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things
I recently read Chester Nez's memoir, Code Talker [1].

I highly recommend it. Experiencing the story from a code talker's perspective
and reading how he chose to enlist and fight for his country despite how it
had treated his people, makes all the difference.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11437988-code-
talker](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11437988-code-talker)

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ChrisNorstrom
I think this is the best, if not only time, I've seen "security through
obscurity" work so well.

~~~
FireBeyond
Randomly, how would you know, in general?

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ChrisNorstrom
You Sir, are correct. The only time I ever hear about "security through
obscurity" is when it fails, not when it succeeds. I got so used to the open
source model where everything is known and flaws are more likely to be fixed.
I guess that doesn't work for every application.

~~~
ljf
I have to say I almost came to write the same thing, and then the above
comment got me thinking. I guess buried treasure is amongst the most
successful usually... In that it keeps it away from those the owner was hiding
it from for many decades or more, before accidentally getting 'cracked':
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10861775/Couple-
who-found-gold-in-back-yard-are-millions-of-dollars-better-off.html)

