Marti Ke language

Mati Ke
Magati Ke
Matige
Native to	Australia
Region	Wadeye, Northern Territory
Ethnicity	Mati Ke
Extinct	by 2016 [1]
Language family	Western Daly Marringarr Mati Ke
Language codes
ISO 639-3	zmg
Glottolog	mart1254
AIATSIS [2]	N163
ELP	Mati Ke

Marti Ke (Magati Ke, Matige, Magadige, Mati Ke, also Magati-ge, Magati Gair) is an Australian Aboriginal language of the Western Daly family. It was spoken by the Mati Ke people. As of 2020 ^[update] it is included in a language revival project which aims to preserve critically endangered languages.

Classification

Mati Ke, also known as Magati-Ge, Magadige, Marti Ke, Magati Gair, is classified as one of the Western Daly languages, and bearing close affinities to Marringarr and Marrithiyel. ^[3]

Geographic distribution

The language was spoken in the Northern Territory, Wadeye, along Timor Sea, ^[4] coast south from Moyle River estuary to Port Keats, southwest of Darwin. ^[5]

Current status

In 1983 around 30 fluent speakers of the language survived, ^[6] and by the early 2000s, some 50 people were thought to still speak some of it as a second or third language. ^[7]

By the early 2000s the last completely fluent speakers were reckoned to be three people, Johnny Chula, Patrick Nudjulu and his sister Agatha Perdjert, both of whom who moved back to a government-built outstation at Kuy on the Shores facing the Timor Sea. ^[8] Though living in close proximity to one another, they never spoke it together since in their social system communication between brother and sister after puberty was forbidden. ^[9]

The three Marringarr elders who are the last known native speakers of Magati Ke (2007)

According to the Language Database, as of 2005 Mati Ke language had a population of three. ^{[4] [10]} Mati Ke speakers have primarily switched to use of English and the flourishing Aboriginal language Murrinh-Patha. ^[4] The ethnic population is about 100, and there are 50 second language users.

As the language disappeared, linguists worked on collecting information and recording the voices of the remaining speakers. ^[4]

By 2016, there were no more fluent speakers of Magati Ke. ^[1]

Language revival project

As of 2020 ^[update] , Mati Ke is one of 20 languages prioritised as part of the Priority Languages Support Project, being undertaken by First Languages Australia and funded by the Department of Communications and the Arts. The project aims to "identify and document critically-endangered languages—those languages for which little or no documentation exists, where no recordings have previously been made, but where there are living speakers". ^[11]

References

1. "Preserving precious Indigenous languages". Pursuit. Retrieved 2026-03-07.
2. N163 Mati Ke at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
3. Grimes 2003, p. 416.
4. Abley, Mark (2003). Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages. Toronto, ON: Random House Canada. ISBN   0679311017.
5. "Marti Ke". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2015-12-14.
6. Abley 2005, p. 11.
7. Grimes 2003, pp. 415–416.
8. Abley 2005, pp. 3, 11.
9. Michaels 2007, p. 106.
10. "The Language Database - Mati Ke". www.hermanboel.eu. Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 2015-12-14.
11. "Priority Languages Support Project". First Languages Australia. Archived from the original on 13 January 2020. Retrieved 13 January 2020.

Sources

• Grimes, Barbara Dix (2003). "Daly Languages". In Frawley, William (ed.). International Encyclopedia of Linguistics: AAVE-Esperanto. Vol. 1 (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 415–416. ISBN   978-0-195-13977-8.
• Abley, Mark (2005). Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages. Houghton-Mifflin. ISBN   978-0-618-56583-2.
• Michaels, Walter Benn (2007). The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality. Macmillan. ISBN   978-1-466-81881-1.