Is a part of the agenda for the Athabaskan/Athapaskan(sp)
Conference, to bring about a standard language?
Just curious.. Sort of using latin as a lingua franca in
romance language areas (and others)..
No, not at all. The conference deals with description of the languages,
language teaching and preservation efforts, and so forth. To my
knowledge the development of a standard language has not been
suggested.
One Athabaskan-speaker I know did once make the observation that,
because there are so many different native languages regional and
national meetings, such as the Assembly of First Nations in Canada,
conduct their meetings in English. He thought that it might be
a good idea if native people would adopt some native language as
a lingua franca for such purposes so as to avoid using a non-native
language. If such an idea were to go anywhere, the language chosen
would most likely not be Athabaskan. They're too hard to learn for
people who don't already speak another Athabaskan language.
Bill Poser