TheCodeBreakers
by field telephone; this was the idea of Captain E. W. Horner, who named
Solomon Lewis as the chief of the detail. Other Indian tongues were also
used. During preparations for World War II, the Signal Corps tested
Comanches and Indians from Michigan and Wisconsin in war games, but
most of the codetalkers in the combat itself were Navaho. One reason
probably was that the tribe was large enough (more than 50,000 persons)
to furnish a goodly number of speakers; another, that reportedly only 28
non-Navahos—mainly anthropologists and missionaries—could speak
the language, and none of these were German or Japanese; a third
reason was the extreme difficulty of the tongue and
the near impossibility—even if someone did learn it—of counterfeiting
its sounds.
"Sounds [in Navaho] must be reproduced with pedantic neatness . . .
almost as if a robot were talking," wrote anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn.
"The talk of those who have learned Navaho as adults always has a
annaabi.ee 
