Anindilyakwa | |
---|---|
Enindhilyakwa, Enindhilyagwa | |
Native to | Australia Northern Territory |
Region | Groote Eylandt, Northern Territory, Australia |
Ethnicity | Warnindhilyagwa |
Native speakers | 1,486 (2016 census) [1] |
Macro-Pama–Nyungan?
| |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | aoi |
Glottolog | anin1240 [2] |
AIATSIS [3] | N151 |
Anindilyakwa is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by the Warnindhilyagwa people on Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Northern Territory of Australia. A 2001 Australian government study identified more than 1000 speakers of the language, [4] although there are reports of as many as three thousand. In 2008, it was cited in a study on whether humans had an innate ability to count without having words for numbers. While the language traditionally had terms for numbers up to 20, they are no longer known to younger speakers. [5] [6] In the 2016 census, around 1500 people said they spoke Anindilyakwa. [7]
The Warnindhilyagwa, otherwise (formerly) known as Ingura, are an Indigenous Australian people living on Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Groote Eylandt is the largest island in the Gulf of Carpentaria and the fourth largest island in Australia. It is the homeland of, and is owned by, the Warnindhilyagwa who speak the Anindilyakwa language.
The Gulf of Carpentaria is a large, shallow sea enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the eastern Arafura Sea. The northern boundary is generally defined as a line from Slade Point, Queensland in the northeast, to Cape Arnhem, Northern Territory in the west.
Anindilyakwa may be most closely related to Nunggubuyu, on the adjacent mainland, but that is yet to be confirmed. [3]
Nunggubuyu or Wubuy is an Australian Aboriginal language, the traditional language of the Nunggubuyu people. It is the primary traditional language spoken in the community of Numbulwar in the Northern Territory. The language is classified as severely endangered by UNESCO, with only 272 speakers according to the 2016 census. Most children in Numbulwar can understand Nunggubuyu when spoken to, but cannot speak it themselves, having to reply in Kriol. To counter this, starting in 1990, the community has been embarking on a revitalisation programme for the language by bringing in elders to teach it to children at the local school.
Spellings of the name include:
Robert Malcolm Ward Dixon is a Professor of Linguistics in the College of Arts, Society, and Education and The Cairns Institute, James Cook University, Queensland. He is also Deputy Director of The Language and Culture Research Centre at JCU. Doctor of Letters, he was awarded a Honorary Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa by JCU in 2018. Fellow of British Academy; Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and Honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America, he is one of three living linguists to be specifically mentioned in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics by P. H. Matthews (2014).
It also known as Groote Eylandt, after its location. Another name is Ingura or Yingguru.
Anindilyakwa is related to the Arnhem languages of the mainland. [8] [9]
The Macro-Gunwinyguan languages, also called Arnhem or Gunwinyguan, are a family of Australian Aboriginal languages spoken across eastern Arnhem Land in northern Australia. Their relationship has been demonstrated through shared morphology in their verbal inflections.
The analysis of Anindilyakwa's vowels is open to interpretation. Stokes [10] analyses it as having four phonemic vowels, /i e a u/. Leeding [11] analyses it as having just two, /ɨ a/.
Peripheral | Coronal | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bilabial | Velar | Laminal | Apical | ||||
rounded | unrounded | Palatal | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | ||
Stop | p | kʷ | k | c | t̪ | t | ʈ |
Nasal | m | ŋʷ | ŋ | ɲ | n̪ | n | ɳ |
Lateral | ʎ | l̪ | (ɭ) | ||||
Rhotic | r | ɻ | |||||
Semivowel | w | j |
All Anindilyakwa words end in a vowel. Clusters of up to three consonants can occur within words.
Anindilyakwa has five noun classes, or genders, each marked by a prefix:
In linguistics, grammatical gender is a specific form of noun class system in which the division of noun classes forms an agreement system with another aspect of the language, such as adjectives, articles, pronouns, or verbs. This system is used in approximately one quarter of the world's languages. In these languages, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called gender; the values present in a given language are called the genders of that language. According to one definition: "Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated words."
For bound pronouns, instead of "human male" and "non-human male" classes there is a single "male" class.
All native nouns carry a class prefix, but some loanwords may lack them.
According to Stokes [12] the language traditionally had numerals up to twenty but since the introduction of English, English words are now used almost exclusively for numbers above five.
This song is a translation of the church song "This is the day", sung by the local churchgoers in the community of Angurugu. The spelling and translation requires confirmation.
Anindilyakwa | Approximate translation |
---|---|
Mema mamawurra Ngumanekburrakama God Narriyekiyerra, Akuwerikilyelyingmajungwuna Narriyekiyerra Akuwerikilyelyingmajungwuna | This day Made by God We will rejoice and be glad in it This is the day made by God We will rejoice in it |
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