ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Southern Athabascan grammar

Southern Athabascan grammar is the way people who speak Southern Athabascan languages put words together to make sentences. Imagine you have a bunch of blocks that represent words. The Southern Athabascan speaker would put the blocks in a certain order to make a sentence.

Each block represents an important part of the sentence like who is doing something, what they are doing, and when they are doing it. Just like how we need to put Lego blocks in the correct order to build something, Southern Athabascans put words together in a particular way to make a complete sentence.

One thing that's important in Southern Athabascan grammar is how verbs change depending on who is doing the action. For example, the word for "I eat" is different than the word for "he eats". So depending on who is doing the action, the verb will change to match them.

In addition to the way verbs change, Southern Athabascan languages also have rules for how words can be put together to make the sentence clear. For example, in English we say "I am a student" but in Southern Athabascan, it might be "Student me am." Both are correct, but they just have a different order of words.

Overall, Southern Athabascan grammar is just the way that people who speak Southern Athabascan languages arrange their words to communicate clearly. It's like building with blocks, but with words instead!