Something to be Told or Talked About

December 12, 2025

Submitted By

Bill Allen

I went to chop quii in vah key to get money for the mud chew da. The ax blade came off, hitting me on the mohoh. Annie fell on the jew wood, got baa a gath as a kilhee jewdum. My nowatc laughed at me. A couple of more sentences: An oxs wearing a blue eeputh was selling churrmith takko. I wanted churrmath to eat with my guyisva. Be careful with our Niok. Don't get hooked on phonetics.

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate,” is a line from a hit 1967 film, “Cool Hand Luke.” For us GRICsters, it could be "What we've got here is a failure to communicate with written O'odham." If you look through Saxton's Pima to English Dictionary, the “Red Book,” you might be struck by the unique way O'odham was written back in the 1960s. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has data showing Native and Aboriginal languages having fewer and fewer fluent native speakers, who then have a hard time finding other people to talk with in that language. There are levels a language may go through before it becomes extinct. O'odham Niok is listed as vulnerable, and it seems that now more people are interested in learning and writing O'odham or O'otham Niok before it slips to the endangered level. Communication could be helped if we all used the same system or sentence structures. Writing Oh Oh dam now seems to have taken on an 'anything goes," approach. Ask three different people, get three different answers.

When teaching Aw Aw Tham, some prefer to see the written word and ask for a spelling. More often than not, one sounds out an Aw Aw Tham word and writes it phonetically like they might have been taught in schools, but the English language and pronunciation rules don’t always fit Niok very well.

In the 1960s, linguist Albert Alvarez, a Tohono O’odham trained in linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, partnered with MIT professor Ken Hale to try and clear up the confusion by developing a writing system for O'odham. As linguists, their writing included visual 'clues' how to pronounce O'odham words. This ' tells us a vowel is short, this: is for a long vowel, a breve ĭ tells us certain letters need to be almost silent. A squiggly line on top of a letter, a tilde is used in the word añi--it’s not pronounced “annie.” Such visual clues are called diacritics. This system of writing became known as the Alvarez-Hale Orthography. The idea was this format would be used by all O'odham tribes so we could all understand written O'odham. In a sense, Alvarez-Hale created a language wheel. Education consultant Anthony D’Angelo tells teachers, “Don’t reinvent the wheel, just realign it.” Our brains realign all the time. We recognize symbols like logos, emojis, traffic signs, hand signals, even eye rolls. Musicians “read music.” Visual 'clues' let their brains translate symbols for sharp or flat notes, beats, and rests. We cannot talk to John Phillip Sousa but we can hear and read his music today. His music was once a mainstay in government boarding school curriculums, became very popular with O'otham marching bands, and what’s a parade without a marching band?

Back to the wheel: If different O’otham teachers disregard the Alvarez-Hale system and reinvent/replace with what they feel is right, students have multiple learning curves. Sure, it takes dedicated time to learn the Alvarez-Hale system, but it can be done. It's a darn good wheel to roll with. Alvarez and Hale laid the groundwork. Another O’odham linguist, Dr. Ofelia Zepeda, continued the drive to help us all communicate with each other. Her book, Tohono O'odham Grammar, is a landmark in teaching Native or Aboriginal languages. Several O’otham-centric people/organizations working to revitalize neok lean on her work. The Huhugam Heritage Center sponsors classes led by community members with the assistance of elders. One community member leading classes, H. Lopez, tells learners, "It is not your fault you haven't learned O'otham." (Elders felt English was needed to land jobs, a key to survival. Many, most, of our ancestors were disciplined in school if they used their indigenous language. Maybe some GRIN readers experienced that.) Today tribes are addressing Native language survival. The Alvarez-Hale wheel would help unify language learning among our brother tribes. Today, many are curious, willing to learn. Keep in mind, if it was easy then everyone would be writing and speaking O'otham. O'odham have done difficult things in the past, why should we be any different today?

O'odham/O'otham has been spelled many ways throughout the years which can be confusing today. Same for ñeok which is speaking or Ñi’okĭ, referring to the written form.

You say sialik, I say sialim. You say si:l, I say pusth. You say mi:stol, I say mi:tol — let's NOT call the whole thing off. Vup do hap e'ju. It will happen.