Umbugarla language

Umbugarla
Umbugarla
Mbukarla
Native to	Australia
Region	Northern Territory
Extinct	c. 1990s, with the death of Butcher Knight
Language family	Darwin Umbugarlic Umbugarla; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	umr
Glottolog	umbu1235
AIATSIS	N43
ELP	Umbugarla
	historic distribution of Umbugarla

Last updated October 23, 2025

Umbugarla or Mbukarla is a possible Australian language isolate once spoken by three people in Arnhem Land, northern Australia as of 1981, and is now extinct.

Classification

Umbugarla was once considered a language isolate (together with Ngurmbur as a dialect), but Mark Harvey has made a case for it being part of a family of Darwin Region languages.^[2]

Ngurmbur and Bugurnidja are poorly attested extinct languages, which are joined with Umbugarla to form the Umbugarlic branch.

Tryon (2007) lists the following varieties of Umbugarla–Ngumbur:

Ngunbudj (Gonbudj), Umbugarla, Bugunidja, Ngarduk, Ngumbur.

However, nothing is known of Ngunbudj or Ngarduk, which were extinct by World War II.

Phonology

Consonants

	Peripheral		Laminal	Apical
	Labial	Velar	Palatal	Alveolar	Retroflex
Plosive	b	ɡ	ɟ	d	ɖ
Nasal	m	ŋ	ɲ	n	ɳ
Lateral			ʎ	l	ɭ
Rhotic					ɽ
Approximant	w		j	ɹ

/ɡ/ can be heard as either stops [ k ] or [ ʔ ] when in word-final or word-medial position, and as a fricative [ ɣ ] when in intervocalic position.
/ɽ/ can also be heard as an alveolar tap [ ɾ ] when in intervocalic position.

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i iː	u uː
Mid	ɛ	ɔ
Low	a aː

Vowels can be lengthened when in open syllables or in word-final position.^[3]

Phoneme	Allophones
/a/	[ ä ], [ äː ], [ æ ], [ ɛ ], [ ə ], [ ɒ ], [ o ]
/ɛ/	[ ɛ ], [ ɛː ]
/i/	[ i ], [ iː ], [ ɨ ], [ ʉ ], [ ə ], [ eː ]
/u/	[ u ], [ uː ], [ o ], [ oː ], [ ʉ ], [ ə ]
/uː/	[ uː ], [ oː ]

References

↑ N43 Umbugarla at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
↑ Bowern, Claire. 2011. "How Many Languages Were Spoken in Australia?", Anggarrgoon: Australian languages on the web, 23 December 2011 (corrected 6 February 2012)
↑ Davies, Jennifer (1989). Umbugarla: A Sketch Grammar. University of Melbourne.

External links

Umbugarla Swadesh list at the Internet Archive

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[AIATSIS-1] N43 Umbugarla at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

[2] Bowern, Claire. 2011. "How Many Languages Were Spoken in Australia?", Anggarrgoon: Australian languages on the web, 23 December 2011 (corrected 6 February 2012)

[3] Davies, Jennifer (1989). Umbugarla: A Sketch Grammar. University of Melbourne.

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