[HN Gopher] One of the last Navajo code-talkers died on October ...
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One of the last Navajo code-talkers died on October 19th, aged 107
Author : helsinkiandrew
Score : 29 points
Date : 2024-12-08 07:37 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| https://archive.ph/vBX2o
| onychomys wrote:
| I've always wondered why the Japanese didn't do the same thing in
| reverse. There's gotta be some tiny languages from small ethnic
| groups on the islands. At the time, it's not like we could have
| gone and looked up the words in a dictionary somehow. Even
| without it being encoded, it would have worked pretty well. And
| yet they didn't even think about it, as far as I know.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Perhaps Ainu[1]? Biggest problem there is that after 600+ years
| of contact with Japanese, a lot of vocabulary is common between
| the languages.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_languages
| VTimofeenko wrote:
| There is a small population of Ainu living in far east of
| modern Russia. This can be probably extrapolated to them
| living there during USSR times. Ainu have had... strained
| relationship with Japan, so they could had been enlisted by
| the USSR during the war to decrypt messages. That's not to
| say that Ainu people's relationship with USSR has been ideal
| either, but them serving as translators during the war seems
| plausible.
| bell-cot wrote:
| I don't know the history on that...but the Imperial Japanese
| Government's decision-making was frequently impaired by
| overconfidence.
| DylanDmitri wrote:
| More fascism = less peripheral vision
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Context is an interesting key here, I think. That point in the
| US coincided with a increased interest in First Nations, and in
| some places a renewed attempt to _preserve_ their heritages,
| especially linguistically. The US generally sees itself as a
| nation of immigrants and one axis of its "Freedom of Speech"
| has historically seen the usefulness to speak one's own
| language, whatever it may be. Diversity of languages has been a
| goal for the US at various times in its cultural history. In
| that context, "what's the most diverse language that Americans
| speak?" is a question you can ask, and an answer you can find
| without much difficulty.
|
| Japan had one and only one national language. Japan didn't have
| the culture of thinking of itself as a melting pot where many
| languages might meet. It probably wouldn't have thought to ask
| that question at all "what's the most diverse language that the
| Japanese speak?" In practice, we can assume that's also why it
| confused the Japanese for so long in the war, it wasn't a
| question to think of themselves, it probably was a hard
| question to ask of Americans if they saw "English" as the
| national language they might also not think to ask "what other
| languages do Americans speak?" or maybe even "why isn't this
| English or a derivative of/code for English?"
| wbl wrote:
| Oh no it's very hard. You go to NYC and spend weeks in barber
| shops and ethnic restaurants until you hear the fragments of
| the nearly extinct tongue. Name the language and it is likely
| spoken in the five boroughs.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| Apparently they did: I've heard it claimed there was at least
| one submarine that used Kagoshima-ben, a famously impenetrable
| dialect spoken in southern Kyushu, for precisely this purpose.
| I can't find any reliable source though.
|
| More generally though, Japan now and Imperial Japan in
| particular was very big on there being "one Japan" with one
| Japanese people and one standard language. Dialects were not
| encouraged and Okinawan, which is really a different language,
| was ruthlessly suppressed (kids punished for speaking it in
| school etc).
| gerdesj wrote:
| WN.
|
| Those letters mean: "Welsh no". Back in the day, Welsh
| children would be punished for speaking Welsh (instead of
| English) and made to wear a wooden board with WN on it around
| their neck. The board would be passed on through the day to
| the final transgressor who would receive a thrashing or
| similar punishment. Generally all of them would get a
| thrashing anyway - it was good for them!
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Ironically, we don't call his people by their own name (Navajo is
| what the Tewa people called the Dine')
| gerdesj wrote:
| "The Navajo are speakers of a Na-Dene Southern Athabaskan
| language which they call Dine bizaad (lit. 'People's
| language'). The term Navajo comes from Spanish missionaries and
| historians who referred to the Pueblo Indians through this
| term, although they referred to themselves as the Dine, meaning
| '(the) people'."
|
| From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Why Navajo is one of the most difficult languages (2023)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41097075 - July 2024 (84
| comments)
|
| _Why Navajo is the hardest language to learn_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38484528 - Dec 2023 (1
| comment)
|
| _Samuel Sandoval, among last Navajo Code Talkers, dies at 98_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32297121 - July 2022 (1
| comment)
|
| _Navajo Code Talker John Pinto Dies, Age 94_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20008374 - May 2019 (2
| comments)
|
| _Navajo Code Talkers_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10059642 - Aug 2015 (2
| comments)
|
| _Last Of The Navajo 'Code Talkers' Dies At 93_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7848945 - June 2014 (19
| comments)
| teractiveodular wrote:
| The Japanese tried to crack the code by torturing a poor guy
| called Joe Kieyoomia who was Navajo, but _not_ a code-talker or
| even aware of the existence of the program, but they didn 't get
| far. Amazingly, he survived the concentration camp, the Bataan
| death march and getting nuked in Nagasaki, returning to the US
| and living until 77.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Kieyoomia
| julianpye wrote:
| The obituaries are often my favourite part of the Economist. They
| are edited by Ann Wroe, who is the obit writer -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Wroe - a true legend.
|
| They focus mostly on long-forgotten people and create an intense
| glimpse into the short timeframe when their life made a big
| impact.
|
| My favourite obit of all time of hers is the one of Bill Millin:
| https://www.economist.com/obituary/2010/08/26/bill-millin
| (https://archive.is/iZifs)
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