Robert W. Young

Robert W. Young (May 18, 1912 – February 20, 2007), professor emeritus of Linguistics at the University of New Mexico, was an American linguist known for his work on the Navajo language. With Navajo scholar William Morgan, Young compiled the monumental The Navajo Language: A Grammar and Colloquial Dictionary, a dictionary accompanied by a 400-page grammar "sketch". Young, Morgan and Sally Midgette also produced the Analytical Lexicon of Navajo, which organizes the lexicon by root.

A native of Chicago, Young became interested in Native American languages when he discovered that a group of Mexican railroad workers whom he encountered spoke, in addition to Spanish, Nahuatl. After earning a liberal arts degree from the University of Illinois in 1935, he moved to New Mexico where he enrolled in graduate school in Anthropology at the University of New Mexico and began his study of Navajo.

In the early 1940s he joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs where he worked primarily on programs related to Navajo language and education. This work was interrupted by a stint in the Marine Corps during the Second World War, during which he was involved in the Navajo Code Talker project. Upon his retirement from the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1971 he became an adjunct professor of Linguistics at the University of New Mexico.

In July 1996, Robert Young was honored, along with William Morgan, in the Navajo Nation Council Chambers for his work on the Navajo language. The two were presented Pendleton Blankets embroidered with the seal of the Navajo Nation by members of the Navajo Language Academy, including Paul Platero, Ellavina Perkins, Alyse Neundorf, and MaryAnn Willie.

The University of New Mexico department of linguistics has established a scholarship in Young's honor, available for students who study Native American languages.