Athabaskanists conversationally fluent in Athabaskan languages

[James Crippen]

One of my colleagues was recently incredulous at the idea that
Athabaskanists could be conversationally competent in an Athabaskan
language. I know a few of you are, but I’m curious how many. If you
don’t mind, please let me know. You can announce with pride here on
the list that you can talk about the weather and hunting in one of
your research languages, or you can just email me privately if you
don’t want to toot your own horn (but you should be proud of the
accomplishment!). Native speaker linguists don’t count, though I’m of
course envious. :)

For full disclosure, I can talk about the weather and about hunting in
Tlingit, but I don’t know many fishing verbs and have no clue how to
use all the classificatory verbs correctly, and some grammatical
things like the contingent and prohibitive-optative still elude me. So
I guess I am conversationally competent in a few areas, but I’m
useless in others.

This is not for publication, just anecdote material.

Thanks,
James