I Saw This On Quora And Thought It Was Cool And Wanted To Share It On Here. Its A Long Read But Crazy.

I saw this on quora and thought it was cool and wanted to share it on here. Its a long read but crazy. Its from Erik Painter

They did try. And they did capture Navajo men. However, they were unsuccessful in using them to decipher the code. The reason was simple. The Navajo Code was a code that used Navajo. It was not spoken Navajo. To a Navajo speaker, who had not learned the code, a Navajo Code talker sending a message sounds like a string of unconnected Navajo words with no grammar. It was incomprehensible. So, when the Japanese captured a Navajo man named Joe Kieyoomia in the Philippines, he could not really help them even though they tortured him. It was nonsense to him.

The Navajo Code had to be learned and memorized. It was designed to transmit a word by word or letter by letter exact English message. They did not just chat in Navajo. That could have been understood by a Navajo speaker, but more importantly translation is never, ever exact. It would not transmit precise messages. There were about 400 words in the Code.

The first 31 Navajo Marines created the Code with the help of one non-Navajo speaker officer who knew cryptography. The first part of the Code was made to transmit English letters. For each English letter there were three (or sometimes just two) English words that started with that letter and then they were translated into Navajo words. In this way English words could be spelled out with a substitution code. The alternate words were randomly switched around. So, for English B there were the Navajo words for Badger, Bear and Barrel. In Navajo that is: nahashchʼidí, shash, and tóshjeeh. Or the letter A was Red Ant, Axe, or Apple. In Navajo that is: wóláchííʼ, tsénił , or bilasáana. The English letter D was: bįįh=deer, and łééchąąʼí =dog, and chʼįįdii= bad spiritual substance (devil).

For the letter substitution part of the Code the word “bad” could be spelled out a number of ways. To a regular Navajo speaker it would sound like: “Bear, Apple, Dog”. Or other times it could be “ Barrel, Red Ant, Bad Spirit (devil)”. Other times it could be “Badger, Axe, Deer”. As you can see, for just this short English word, “bad” there are many possibilities and to the combination of words used. To a Navajo speaker, all versions are nonsense. It gets worse for a Navajo speaker because normal Navajo conjugates in complex ways (ways an English or Japanese speaker would never dream of). These lists of words have no indicators of how they are connected. It is utterly non-grammatical.

Then to speed it up, and make it even harder to break, they substituted Navajo words for common military words that were often used in short military messages. None were just translations. A few you could figure out. For example, a Lieutenant was “one silver bar” in Navajo. A Major was “Gold Oak Leaf” n Navajo. Other things were less obvious like a Battleship was the word for Whale in Navajo. A Mine Sweeper was the Navajo word for Beaver.

A note here as it seems hard for some people to get this. Navajo is a modern and living language. There are, and were, perfectly useful Navajo words for submarines and battleships and tanks. They did not “make up words because they had no words for modern things”. This is an incorrect story that gets around in the media. There had been Navajo in the military before WWII. The Navajo language is different and perhaps more flexible than English. It is easy to generate new words. They borrow very few words and have words for any modern thing you can imagine. The words for telephone, or train, or nuclear power are all made from Navajo stem roots.

Because the Navajo Marines had memorized the Code there was no code book to capture. There was no machine to capture either. They could transmit it over open radio waves. They could decode it in a few minutes as opposed to the 30 minutes to two hours that other code systems at the time took. And, no Navajo speaker who had not learned the Code could make any sense out of it.

The Japanese had no published texts on Navajo. There was no internationally available description of the language. The Germans had not studied it at the time. The Japanese did suspect it was Navajo. Linguists thought it was in the Athabaskan language family. That would be pretty clear to a linguist. And Navajo had the biggest group of speakers of any Athabaskan language. That is why they tortured Joe Kieyoomia. But, he could not make sense of it. It was just a list of words with no grammar and no meaning.

For Japanese, even writing the language down from the radio broadcasts would be very hard. It has lots of sounds that are not in Japanese or in English. It is hard to tell where some words end or start because the glottal stop is a common consonant. Frequency analysis would have been hard because they did not use a single word for each letter. And some words stood for words instead of for a letter. The task of breaking it was very hard.

Here is an example of a coded message:

béésh łigai naaki joogii gini dibé tsénił áchį́į́h bee ąą ńdítį́hí joogi béésh łóó’ dóó łóóʼtsoh

When translated directly from Navajo into English it is:

“SILVER TWO BLUE JAY CHICKEN HAWK SHEEP AXE NOSE KEY BLUE JAY IRON FISH AND WHALE. “

You can see why a Navajo who did not know the Code would not be able to do much with that. The message above means: “CAPTAIN, THE DIVE BOMBER SANK THE SUBMARINE AND BATTLESHIP.”

“Two silver bars” =captain. Blue jay= the. Chicken hawk= dive bomber. Iron fish = sub. Whale= battleship. “Sheep, Axe Nose Key”=sank. The only normal use of a Navajo word is the word for “and” which is “dóó ”. For the same message the word “sank” would be spelled out another way on a different day. For example, it could be: “snake, apple, needle, kettle”.

Here, below on the video, is a verbal example of how the code sounded. The code sent below sounded to a Navajo speaker who did not know the Code like this: “sheep eyes nose deer destroy tea mouse turkey onion sick horse 362 bear”. To a trained Code Talker, he would write down: “Send demolition team to hill 362 B”. The Navajo Marine Coder Talker then would give it to someone to take the message to the proper person. It only takes a minute or so to code and decode.

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Sources for Research on English Linguistics, Literature, and Culture

-> links to databases, archives, corpora, encyclopedias, and more

The following sites are for English studies, linguistics, and anglistics.

I could also do another list like this one for other related studies, such as classic philology, German studies, Scandinavian studies, Romance studies, and Slavic studies, in case that’s something you guys are interested in.

All of these sites should allow free access for everyone. Most of them are from Great Britain, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia/New Zealand, and Germany.

(Please let me know, if any of the links don’t work)

Collections / Databases / Archives / Anthologies:

About the USA (information about the US, including holidays, history, society, art and entertainment, media, government, politics, travel, sports, economy, and science)

African American Women Writers of the 19th Century (database of 50 works by African American women of the 19th century)

American Memory (digitalised material from the Americana collection of the Library of Congress)

American Song Sheets (collection of 1,800 song sheets from the 19th century)

American Verse Project (archive with American poetry until 1920)

Archive of Early American Images (7,000 images about North and South America from primary sources between 1492 and 1895)

Arthurian Fiction in Medieval Europe (information about the Arthurian tale and the scripts which spread it around Europe)

Atlas of Surveillance (records surveillance technologies used by US law enforcement agencies, including drones, body cameras, face recognition, etc.)

Australian Poetry Library (over 42,000 poems by over 170 Australian authors)

Bartleby.com (texts of (English-speaking) world literature with reference material; over 370,000 sites)

Bibliography of the International Arthurian Society (literature about the Arthurian tale)

Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads (over 30,000 ballads from the 16th to the 20th century)

Bodleian Library Pre-1920 allegro Catalogue (printed matter in European languages and writings published before 1920 or purchased before 1989 by the Bodleian Library)

BookPage: Issue Archive (monthly information about new books and book reviews)

British Cartoon Archive (over 200,000 cartoons from comic books, newspapers, magazines, and books about British history)

British Fiction 1800-1829 (2,272 texts by about 900 authors of the early 19th century)

British Library Online Gallery: Virtual Books (virtual access to rare / old books of the British Library)

British National Bibliography (bibliography of books and periodicals of the British Library)

Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson Online (database about the life and works of Ben Jonson, a well-known Renaissance writer)

Cambridge History of English and American Literature (online version of the books)

Canadian Literature Archive (texts by Canadian authors)

Canadiana Online (over 200,000 texts of historical publications)

Casgliad y Werin Cymru = Peoples Collection Wales (document collection by 9 Welsh museums and libraries)

Collect Britain (over 90,000 images, photos, maps, and audio material from the British Library)

Contemporary Writers in the UK (biographical information about the most important contemporary authors of Britain and the Commonwealth)

Digital Collections / Harry Ransom Center (access to over 7,000 objects from literature, photography, film, and art, including manuscripts, letters, posters, photos, and drawings since the 16th century)

Digital Comic Museum (access to Public Domain Comics from the ‘Golden Age of Comicbooks’)

Documenting the American South (14 collections of primary sources about history and culture of the Southern States)

DraCor (collection of dramas in several languages published between 472 BC and 1947)

Early Americas Digital Archive (historical texts in regard to America, published between 1492 and the 19th century)

Early Modern Festival Books Database (over 3,000 texts about festival culture, published between 1200 and 1800 in 12 languages)

Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English (interactive database about the morphosyntactic variation in spoken English)

English Broadside Ballad Archive (English ballads of early modern times with transcriptions of the texts and sometimes recordings of the music)

English Poetry Anthologies (English poems from 1250 to 1943)

English-Corpora.org (collection of English corpora)

Environmental History of the Americas Database (2,000 international texts about the environmental history of North and South America)

European Views of the Americas (32,000 European printed texts about America until 1750)

Familiar Quotations (online edition, includes 11,000 quotes of English literary history)

Fontes Anglo-Saxonici (all sources in English or Latin texts from Anglo-Saxon England (until 1066) or Anglo-Saxon authors)

Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS, 1861-1993) (official documentation of foreign-policy decisions of the USA)

Gender Inn (database with more than 8,400 texts about feminist theory and gender studies)

Grand Comics Database (database of all comics about North America published world-wide)

Hamnet : Folger Library Catalogue (online catalogue of the Folger Shakespeare Library)

HANSARD 1803-2005 (British parliamentary sessions from 1803 to 2005)

Hartlib Papers (database with all the letters of Samuel Hartlib)

Heroic in Victorian Periodicals (analyses the motive of heroism in Victorian Great Britain)

Historical Thesaurus of English (800,000 words from Old to Modern English with meanings, synonyms, etc.)

IN Harmony: Sheet Music from Indiana (sheet music from the Indiana University Lilly Library, the Indiana State Library, the Indiana State Museum, and the Indiana Historical Society)

Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections (index of 3,900 anthologies from before 1984)

Internet Shakespeare Editions (database about the life and works of Shakespeare)

Internet Speculative Fiction Database (database of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror Literature)

IntraText Digital Library (texts about religion, philosophy, literature, and history in 39 languages)

ipl2: Information You Can Trust (catalogue of examined, evaluated, and commentated links to American websites)

Japan Science and Technology Information Aggregator (2,000 peer reviewed journals about Japanese research in science, technology, and medicine)

John Johnson Collection (one of the largest collections of printed documents from British history)

Johnsons Dictionary Online (web version of Samuel Johnson’s ‘A Dictionary of the English Language’ (1755))

Joyce Papers 2002 (digitalised collection of the National Library of Ireland in Dublin)

Language in Australia and New Zealand (bibliography of 6,200 titles about Australian and New Zealand languages and language families)

Lecturing Women in Victorian Periodicals Database (Feminist lectures in Victorian England (14 periodicals))

Library of Anglo-American Culture & History

Location Register of English Literary Manuscripts and Letters (locations of English literature from the 18th century to today in Great Britain and Ireland)

Luminarium (English literature and history from the Middle Ages to the 18th century)

Making of America (primary sources of American history from 1859 to 1877 and secondary literature from 1840 to 1900)

Melville Electronic Library (online editions of the works of Hermann Melville)

Middle English Collection (database of 60 works and collections of works of Middle English literature)

MIT Global Shakespeares Video & Performance Archive (online access to Shakespeare performances from around the world)

MLA Language Map (map of the linguistic characteristics of different regions of the USA)

Modernist Journals Project (database of texts about modernism from 1890 to 1922)

New Face of Fiction (modern fiction of Canadian authors from Random House Canada)

OLC Anglistik - Online Contents (articles about anglistics / English studies)

Oxford Journals (by the Oxford University Press; collection of journals)

Oxford Languages (collection of language dictionaries)

Papakilo Database (database about history and culture of Hawaii)

Papers of Abraham Lincoln (database with handwritten papers and documents by Abraham Lincoln)

Pascal / Francis (database of journals and conference proceedings)

PEN America Digital Archive (archive of audio and video materials since 1966)

Perseus Digital Library / Renaissance Materials (collection of 80 texts of English Renaissance literature)

Piers Plowman Electronic Archive (corpus of all manuscripts of the poem ‘Piers Plowman’)

Polish Diaspora in the UK and Ireland (databank on how Polish immigrants influenced British literature and culture)

Popular History in Victorian Magazines Database (database of how popular history was presented in Victorian magazines)

Project Gutenberg (53,000 free ebooks and other texts)

Questia (5,000 free books)

REED Online (database of early English dramas from the Middle Ages to 1642)

Shapell Collection (collection of media about the history of the US in the 19th and 20th century)

SSSL Bibliography: A Checklist of Scholarship on Southern Literature (secondary literature of more than 1,000 authors from the US south)

Swedish American Newspapers / Svensk-Amerikanska Tidningar (database of 300,000 newspaper pages from 28 different daily newspapers published in the US from 1859 to 2007)

TEAMS Middle English texts (online editions of Middle English texts with annotations and bibliographies)

Trove / National Library of Australia (search engine for media relating to Australia)

Vetusta Monumenta : Ancient Monuments, a Digital Edition (digital edition of ‘Vetusta Monumenta’ from 1718 to 1796 with scans of copperplate engravings and scientific commentary)

Victorian Dictionary (sources about life in Victorian London)

Vision of Britain Through Time (historic-geographic information about Great Britain)

Walt Whitman Manuscripts (archive of the manuscripts of Walt Whitman)

Welsh Journals Online (archive of 50 Welsh journals/magazines)

Wright American Fiction (digital library of American novels of the 19th century (1851 und 1875))

Language Corpora:

British National Corpus (100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of British English from the later part of the 20th century)

corpora.unito (linguistic corpora for Italian, French, Spanish, English, and German)

Corpus of Early English Correspondence

Corpus of Electronic Texts (database with texts of Irish literature and literary history in Irish, English, Hiberno-Norman, and Latin)

Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse

Middle English Grammar Corpus (corpus of Middle English texts)

Dictionaries / Encyclopedias:

Cambridge Dictionaries Online

Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia

Dictionary of Irish Biography (contains about 11,000 articles)

Dictionary of the Scots Language

EDD Online 3.0 (based on Joseph Wright’s ‘English Dialect Dictionary’, 1898-1905)

Encyclopaedia Britannica (general encyclopedia with over 90,000 editorally reviewed articles by 4,300 authors)

Encyclopedia of American Studies (800 texts about US history, politics, culture, society, and economy from precolonial times until now)

Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe (records the cultural movements and their influence on cultural communities in Europe in the wake of the Romantic period)

Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (16,350 entries about Science Fiction authors, artists, and filmmakers, as well as entries about films, radio and TV productions, periodicals, and other publications)

Glottopedia (free editable encyclopedia by linguists for linguists)

Green’s Dictionary of Slang (dictionary by Jonathon Green)

Irish Dictionary Online (English - Irish dictionary)

Linguee (translation database by DeepL for word contexts)

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online (monolingual English dictionary)

Macmillan Dictionary (monolingual English dictionary)

Merriam-Webster (dictionary and thesaurus)

Oxford Learners Dictionary

Thesaurus of Old English (Old English (Anglo-Saxon) dictionary)

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245 notes View Post

jolzr2

11 months ago

hi did you know that ancient mesopotamians buried their dead under the floors of their own houses to always be close to them? i can't write a poem about this but by god i will write a master's thesis

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congrats this is inspiring

69K notes View Post

jolzr2

4 years ago

London Boy is the song you write when your team gently reminds you that you need to start mentioning the UK in your music since you keep dating British people who do not know anything about New York but you have maintained a narrative that the truth is in your music.

19 notes View Post

jolzr2

7 months ago

people will see a fandom thing and be like "why isn't this a fanfic" "why is there no fanfic about this" my brother in christ, because you're not writing it

34K notes View Post

jolzr2

3 years ago

charlie texting that he is screaming whilst lying on his phone in a dark room is officially the most accurate depiction of any person, ever

37K notes View Post

jolzr2

2 months ago

Them

Here's How ‘Our Flag Means Death’ Fans Raised Over $100k for Trans Kids

The auction included props and promotional items from the show.

Wa-fucking-hoo for the OFMD fandom! :) <3

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trans rights ofmd

1K notes View Post

jolzr2

3 years ago

PopCrush

Scooter Braun Reportedly Thought Taylor Swift Was Bluffing About Re-Recording Her Albums

Scooter Braun reportedly thought that Taylor Swift was bluffing and wouldn't actually re-record her albums.

According to a new report from Financial Times, the SB Projects Founder believed that the "Lover" singer was just bluffing about re-recording and re-releasing her early music after losing her masters.

... Braun and his team supposedly told potential buyers that Swift's threat would only generate publicity and boost streaming and downloads. Braun's explanation sounded reasonable to investors who didn't believe the artist would take the time to re-record her past work out of spite.

Three people who were approached to purchase the masters confirmed to the outlet that such a conversation took place

...Financial Times reports that the deal also included a post-purchase earnout to Braun and Carlyle Group (who helped fund Braun's purchase of Big Machine), if sales and streams hit specific targets.

However, Swift didn't back down...

Now, investors including Shamrock Capital, Braun and Carlyle Group are allegedly worried that they won't hit previously intended targets with Swift's original recordings as her new recordings will likely undercut their goals.

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jolzr2

7 months ago

sometimes you just need to summon this flowchart as an overlay of your vision

19K notes View Post

jolzr2

7 months ago

I love how despite that Agatha litteraly just almost got killed by him, she still decided to tease Billy.

But even as she teased him, she expressed pride. She was proud that he found a way to survive. She was proud that Billy a kid she knew when he was young, found a way to live on.

4K notes View Post

jolzr2

3 months ago