The first, incomplete Navajo-English Dictionary was compiled, in 1958, by Leon Wall, an official in the U.S. government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. Wall, who was in charge of a literacy program on the Navajo reservation, worked on the dictionary with William Morgan, a Navajo translator.

’ąą’: “well (anticipation, as when a person approaches one as though to speak but says nothing)”

I could begin and end here. My mother was a full-blooded Navajo woman, raised on the reservation, but she was never taught to speak her mother’s language. There was a time when most words were better left unspoken. I am still drawn to the nasal vowels and slushy consonants, though I feel no hope of ever learning the language. It is one thing to play dress-up, to imitate pronunciations and understanding; it is another thing to think or dream or live in a language not your own.

’aa ’áhályánii: “bodyguard”

In August of 2015, I move from Boston to Tucson, to join an M.F.A. program in creative writing. I applied to schools surrounding the Navajo reservation because I wanted to be closer to my mother’s family. My plan: to take classes on rug weaving and the Navajo language (Diné Bizaad); to visit my family as often as possible. It will be opened: the door to the path we have lost.

’ąą ’ályaa: “It was opened.”

A PDF version of the Navajo-English dictionary from the University of Northern Colorado. I wonder which librarian there decided to digitize it. Most government documents, after they are shipped to federal depositories around the country, languish on out-of-the-way shelves and collect decades of dust before being deaccessioned and destroyed. I have worked in these libraries—I know.

ąą ’ályaa, bich’į’: “It was opened to them; they were invited.”

One of the reasons Navajo soldiers were recruited as code talkers during the Second World War was because there were no published dictionaries of their language at that time—and because the grammatical structure of the language was so different from English, German, and Japanese. They were invited to: a world beyond the borders of the reservation. My mother always told me the only way to get off the Rez is to join the military or marry off.

’ąą ’át’é: “It is open.”

One of the first typewriters that could adequately record the Navajo language was built for Robert Young, a linguist who also worked with William Morgan and published a more comprehensive dictionary and grammar guide (“The Navaho Language”), in 1972. In the nineteen-seventies, a Navajo font was released for the IBM Selectric, an electric typewriter, which would serve as the basis for a digital font on early computers.

’ąą ’át’éego: “since it was open”

Navajo fonts are now available for download in multiple typefaces: Times New Roman, Verdana, and Lucida Sans.

’áádahojoost’įįd: “They quit, backed out, desisted, surrendered.”

Spring. 1864. The “Long Walk” begins. The U.S. Army forcibly relocates the Navajo from their homeland, to Bosque Redondo, in eastern New Mexico. Those who do not resist learn to walk, but death follows both paths.

’aa ’dahoost’įįd, t’óó: “They gave up, surrendered.”

There are many reasons parents do not teach their children the Navajo language: U.S. monolingual policies, violence experienced in boarding schools, and perceived status. Those who speak English well will have a better chance for escape.

’aa dahwiinít’į́iį’: “into court (a place where justice is judicially administered)”

A close cousin of mine is scheduled to testify in court in one week; she isn’t sure if she wants to go. I pick her up anyway. Bring her back to Tucson with me.

’aa deet’ą́: “transfer (of property, or ownership)”

My aunt tells me we have land on the reservation, just off I-40. We’ve inherited it from our great-grandmother, Pauline Tom. Only Pauline Tom had many children, and their children had many children, and after she died, in 2008, all those children started fighting. It’s a common problem, and it isn’t unique to the Navajo Nation. Federal land-allotment policies have resulted in too many heirs for too few acres.

’áadi: “there, over there (a remote place)”

On the drive to Tucson along I-40, my cousin points out the black-tar roofs of our family’s houses, and the cemetery—a small, square piece of land—where our great-grandmother is buried. The cemetery is barely distinguishable from the rest of the landscape, and, when I follow her gaze, look away from the highway, I see only the stark, white faces of the headstones and the silver glint of a ribbon in the wind.

’áádįįł: “It is progressively dwindling away; disappearing.”

In 1968, a decade after the first dictionary was published, ninety per cent of the children on the reservation who entered school spoke Navajo; in 2009, only thirty per cent knew the language (Spolsky, “Language Management for Endangered Languages,” 117).

’áadiísh: “There? Thereat?”

September 22, 2015. The second time I pass our allotment on I-40, I try to find the spot my cousin showed me. I look for the headstones; I think of stopping and trying to find my grandmother’s grave. My cousin told me that if you don’t do the proper blessing, the spirit will follow you home. (She asked me, “What is the difference between a spirit and a ghost?”) I don’t know the blessing, but it doesn’t matter; I can’t recognize the cemetery or my family’s land.

’ąąh ’dahaz’ą́: “illness, sickness, an ailment”

September 19th. I catch a cold from my students. Might be the flu. I tell my cousin to stay away, but she says she won’t get sick. We spend all day curled up on the couch watching “Shameless.” She rests her head on my shoulder, on my hip.

’á’á hwiinít’į́, “kindness”

’aa hwiinít’į́: “trial (at law), molestation”

How are these words (kindness/molestation) that sound so similar so different? My aunt tells my cousin that our maternal grandmother molested her sons. My mother tells me other stories, similar but not the same. (“Why would they tell us that?”) It’s hard to believe, but it isn’t. There will never be a trial. These are words better left unspoken, forgotten, erased.

’aa hwiinít’įįhígíí: “the court session that is to come”

September 16th, 2015. My cousin is told that if she doesn’t appear for the court date, a warrant will be put out for her arrest. I agree to drive her back to Window Rock on Monday night, after I am done teaching for the day. It is a six-hour drive, but I am almost happy to make it. I will be in Window Rock, with my family, on the second anniversary of my mother’s death, not by plan but by circumstance.

’ą́ą́hyiłk’as: “body chill”

I am sick with fever, alive with fever dreams. I dream of a two-story, sandstone motel, its three square walls opening onto the desert. A sun sets between two mountains, and heavy drapes are drawn across all the windows. My mother and my aunt and all my sisters are running in and out of the rooms, slamming doors, shouting at each other from the landings. I understand that each door is a choice, each room a potential future, and that my mother’s and my aunt’s and my sisters’ doors are closed to me.

’aak’ee: “fall, autumn”

I start teaching my first freshman-composition class in the fall. I’m convinced, like most first-year teachers, that I have no idea what I am talking about; I spend the entire hour sweating in front of my class. But, afterward, two dark-haired, dark-skinned girls walk up to me and ask me: What are your clans? Where is your family from? We are Navajo, too. We are all three nervous and unsure where the conversation should go, but I want to grab hold of them and root them next to me; graduation rates of native students are abysmally low.