Before European colonization, the United States was home to a vast array of different ethnolinguistic groups, each with its own distinct culture and language. Unfortunately, European colonization wiped out many of these unique cultures and languages, but they’re not all gone. Many people in the United States still speak an indigenous language today, although the numbers are dwindling. One of the biggest indigenous languages in the US is Western Apache.
Western Apache isn’t the biggest U.S. indigenous language—that honor goes to Navajo, Western Apache’s close relative. Around 13,400 people still speak Western Apache, according to the 2013 census, which represents about 65% of the ethnic Western Apache population. Nonetheless, the language is still endangered, since English is much more widely used and prestigious. Thus, members of the Western Apache tribe have been endeavoring to preserve their language through initiatives like language classes. We at TranslationServices.com are also passionate about Western Apache and other indigenous languages, so we’d like to help in our own way: by offering professional Western Apache translation services to anyone who needs them.
Quotes for our Western Apache translation services are available for anyone who requests them!
Diving into Western Apache, one of the most spoken U.S. indigenous languages
Many people have heard of Navajo, the most widely spoken indigenous language in the United States. Western Apache is from the same language family—the Southern Athabaskan branch of the Dené–Yeniseian language family—and is spoken south of Navajo. Specifically, Western Apache is spoken in southeastern Arizona, with other closely related Apachean languages, such as Chiricahua and Jicarilla (which we can also translate), spoken to the east of Western Apache. The language, like most other indigenous languages in the US, is written in a modified version of the Latin script.
Western Apache is a complicated language, like other Southern Athabaskan languages. It’s polysynthetic, meaning it makes heavy use of inflection and affixes to convey grammatical relationships. Western Apache generally places the verb at the end of the sentence in a subject-object-verb word order but predominantly uses prefixes, not suffixes, which is unusual for an SOV language. The language employs a complex classifier system that can specify a noun’s portability, length, rigidity, state (solid, liquid, or in between), and more, allowing for a great degree of nuance. To show possession, Western Apache directly appends to a noun a possessive prefix corresponding to the respective person.
Flexible Western Apache translation services to suit your unique needs
Our Western Apache translators are passionate about their language and eager to help you with your translation project, despite the vast differences between English and Western Apache and the challenges that arise in translation. We’re happy to translate both from Western Apache to English as well as from English to Western Apache for a wide range of documents. Some of our translators specialize in historical documents, so we can translate old Western Apache texts, while others can seamlessly translate Western Apache folk stories into English to share with a broader audience. Regarding translation into Western Apache, we’d be happy to translate surveys or questionnaires into the language so researchers or government agencies can reach this population. We can also translate educational materials into Western Apache to aid the teaching of children in their ancestral language or fun content like books, games, websites, apps, and poems to increase the domain of usage for speakers and learners. Our translation services are also available for other Apachean languages like Chiricahua and Jicarilla.
Reach out today if you’d like to get started with Western Apache translation services!