Sunday, March 2, 2014

"Yas" and Talking 37th Dream with Rainbow and Two Birds




The above photo and video were taken from my porch early in the morning this last Wednesday. We've had snow on the ground for about a week now.

Yesterday afternoon, despite another snow warning, I drove across town to visit a new friend who weaves story blankets.  When I arrived, she was sitting and talking with a friend of her husband.  I sat down at the kitchen table and joined in the conversation.  Her husband's friend is Navajo, and it turned out that he is a fluent speaker of the Navajo language.  My friend is a retired teacher of English to non-English speakers.  We were talking about the light snowfall, and the Navajo man told us the word for snow.  I asked him for the word for "stars" and "moon." I was moved by the beauty of the words but found it difficult to pronounce them correctly.  The Navajo man said that he had once known some of the Crow language, but that was long ago.  After a little while, the Navajo man left on his bike, and my friend and I continued to talk, and she showed me her beautiful story blankets.  Her husband arrived home some time later as it was snowing harder and getting dark.  He said that the roads were still clear.  The snow turned to rain sometime last night, but the air is still cold, and there is still snow on the ground.

Early this morning I found a splendid website with pronunciations of Navajo words and phrases.  I found this video about the Navajo word for "rainbow":



















If you look closely at the photo above, taken from my porch this afternoon,  you will see at least two birds.  



3 comments:

Rubye Jack said...

Listen to those birds. So pretty.
I would love to see the story blankets.

Anonymous said...

Language is such a beautiful thing.

Goat said...

I looked danged closely but I think the birds had flown. Could be my eyes though - increasingly letting me down.

Loved the rainbow word. I always liked the Japanese word for "snow": yuki.