A Note On Navajo Interlingual Puns

Sapir (1932) early on noted the use of intralingual puns in Navajo. This note de-scribes six interlingual puns among Navajos. Four of the puns are from English into Navajo and two concern Navajo into English puns. Such interlingual puns are then com-pared to interlingual puns found in Nakota and Western Apache. It is argued that inter-lingual puns are one way for Native Americans to engage in subtle forms of social commentary about and critique of Euro-Americans. Such interlingual punning in Na-vajo dates at least to the early 1940s and thus has been a continual site for such critique.