Customer Reviews

The Navajo Verb: A Grammar for Students and Scholars

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Be warned - this is a challenging book to get through, as Faltz teaches you the basics of linguistics at the same time as he walks you through all the shifting and morphing pieces and parts of the many forms of the Navajo verb!

After having spent a few months working through some language textbooks and conversational classes, though, I really appreciate this book. Rather than avoiding the verb grammar or throwing charts of morphemes at you, as many other books do, Faltz leads you step-by-step through the linguistic concepts needed to understand the grammar of the Navajo verb. I've always shied away from linguistics, but I find that I'm enjoying this book.

One improvement would be to space out the text more, even adding some illustrations. Almost 500 pages of closely-set pages full of grammar in paragraph form (and the occasional small chart) can get a bit tiresome!

All in all, recommended for those who actually want to be able to read and understand the Navajo verb in its many faces!

Still trying to get to the level of competency in Navajo where Faltz would be useful, so I can't comment too intelligently yet about the book. Tough at this point to figure out whether all the work required to use Faltz' system is more or less difficult than just banging my head against the wall trying to memorize Navajo's insanely challenging paradigms. But a must-own, I think, for students of this language which is at turns hauntingly beautiful and at turns hauntingly difficult.