Which other countries could produce something like the Navajo code talkers?

I would think that in real time tactical operations this could be useful for speed. No coding and decoding necessary if you just have two bilingual speakers at each end. For other than urgent operational commucination surely way too risky.
 
I think the problem with most other minority languages suggested here is that on key factor is missing.

Up until around the time of WWII there was no standardized writing system and no dictionaries and no great body of academic literature about Navajo.

Welsh or Basque or similar languages may have been wired but by the 1930s they were sufficiently well known that they would not see much use in WWII and what little use they did see was in the pacific as Nazi Germany could be expected to have some people who knew enough about the language to make it useless for high security purposes.

There was no academic or any papers in any library in Tokyo that would have offered any expertise on the Navajo language. The same could not as easily be assumed for Berlin and Welsh.

The thing that allowed these languages to be used at all was the fact that in those days information was slow to disseminate and by the time anyone cottoned on to the fact on what was happening, the info would no longer be of any use.

Another thing that would have blocked many other languages from being used was emigration and loyalty. Minority groups usually aren't treated all that well and many people have only limited loyalty to their oppressors. Add to that the fact that people from almost around the globe emigrated to the US and other countries to flew their oppressors, and you have precocious few languages that might be used by any country opposing the US.

The Navajo code talker thing was pretty much unique in time and place and few other minority languages at any other time and place could have worked as well as it did.
 
Nope. There is a Basque diaspora, with speakers in many nations, including the US. The US actually considered using American Basque speakers as code talkers. That got shot down when it was pointed out that there was a group of Spanish priests in Japan. (As Spanish Catholics, they were presumably loyal to the pro-Axis Franco government, and probably sympathetic to Japan.)

The problem with using Basques is that you'd need to find someone who could understand what the hell the Basques are saying.
 
The problem with using Basques is that you'd need to find someone who could understand what the hell the Basques are saying.
Basques are, of necessity, bilingual in Spanish or French. If not necessarily fluent which is a different thing. Like the Navajo code speakers one relies on the users being bilingual in the overall service language and their own. One reason for French central education curricula was to ensure the French army at least could speak and understand Isle de France French whatever patois they spoke amongst themselves. Minority units in one's own forces can induce undesirable 'code speaking' amongst friendly forces thus confusing each other instead of the enemy. Personally I can recall our Corby based signallers being frequently unintelligible to the rest of the battalion.
 
Even the Navajo code talkers had to modify the language to be used in tactical situations with new learned meanings for existing words for modern terms. As far as opsec the use did not give anything away to sig int units because it was used at a tactical level . In an island hopping environment you didn't have units moving in and out of sectors. Oncethe unit was engaged it would stay engaged for the duration of the battle.

Things like codes and onetime pads don't work well in tacticle operations. A simple verification table from the CEOI (Communications and Electronics Operating Instructions used to be the SOI Signal Operating Instructions) that is carried by the Commander or Radio Operator) and used for a limited period of time is the best you can ask for. But with modern digitally encrypted and frequency hopping radios even at the squad or individual level make such tactical codes less important.
 
There are plenty of options.

The language of the San people in Namibia (click-sounds - look it up) is a bit of a stretch to understand. I can also recommend Xhosa as that takes a bit of training.

Scottish is a challenge for everybody! but that is nasty to say. a bit 'daft'

LOL
 
The UK has several - Welsh, Gaelic and Cornish (plus literally dozens of native languages in the Empire days, everything from Cantonese through all the Indian languages to Swahili, Bantu, Zulu etc in Africa). The Royal Welch Fusiliers (I think) used Welsh in Bosnia rather than messing round with crypto as they judged that it was unlikely the Serbs had many fluent Welsh speakers.

In Wingless Victory, Sir Basil Embry records how, while on the run from prison camp. he told German inteeogators that he was Irish. Asked what language he spoke, he said "Erse" - of which he spoke not a word! But when asked to say spmething in Erse, he replied in Urdu, and the Germans were none the wiser.
 
So how long would it take for a Navajo (or any other obscure language) to be identified as such from the moment a message was intercepted? If it takes weeks/months then it's still very valuable, even if there are experts on said language in the other country, just being a speaker of an obscure language does not mean you get to comb through all garbled messages your military stores.
 
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