Wadjiginy language

Wadjiginy
Wogait
Patjtjamalh
Native to	Australia
Region	Daly River
Ethnicity	Wadjiginy
Native speakers	5 (2005) [1]
Language family	Wagaydyic Wadjiginy
Language codes
ISO 639-3	wdj
Glottolog	wadj1254
AIATSIS [1]	N31
ELP	Batjamalh
Linguasphere	28-fbb-a

Wadjiginy, also known as Wagaydy (Wogait) and Batjamalh, is an Australian Aboriginal language. Apart from being closely related to Kandjerramalh, it is not known to be related to any other language, though it has borrowed grammatical and lexical material from neighboring Northern Daly languages. ^[1]

Wadjiginy was spoken in the Northern Territory.

Wadjiginy (Wadyiginy, Wagaydy, Wogaity) is the name of the people; this native language is Patjtjamalh (Batjamalh, Batytyamalh). ^[1]

Phonology

Consonants

	Peripheral		Laminal		Apical
	Labial	Velar	Dental	Palatal	Alveolar	Retroflex
Stop	p ~ b	k ~ ɡ		c ~ ɟ	t ~ d	ʈ ~ ɖ
Nasal	m	ŋ		ɲ	n	ɳ
Lateral			l̪		l	ɭ
Rhotic					r	ɻ
Approximant	w			j

• Voiceless stop sounds may also fluctuate to voiced sounds when in word-initial, intervocalic, post-nasal, and post-liquid positions.
• /k, p/ can also be heard as fricatives [ ɣ ], [ β ] when in intervocalic and post-liquid positions.
• /w/ can be heard as a bilabial approximant [ β̞ ] when before front vowels /i, ɛ, ø/.

Vowels

	Front		Back
High	i	ø ~ y	ʊ
Mid	ɛ
Low	a

• /ø/ can also be realized as a higher [ y ] sound as well as [ ø ]. ^[2]

Phoneme	Allophones
/i/	[ i ], [ ɨ̞ ], [ ɪ ]
/ʊ/	[ ʊ ], [ o ]
/ɛ/	[ ɛ ], [ ɜ ]
/ø/	[ ø ], [ y ]
/a/	[ a ], [ ä ], [ ɑ ]

Vocabulary

Capell (1940) lists the following basic vocabulary items: ^[3]

gloss	Woːgaidj
man	ŋanan
woman	ŋoalaŋ
head	bödja
eye	miba
nose	widja
mouth	ŋaːg
tongue	ŋaːɖal
stomach	bɛnman
bone	big
blood	gavin
kangaroo	mudj
opossum	dadjädaid
crow	wagwag
fly	mul
sun	qeig
moon	qaɽa
fire	vin
smoke	wingar
water	wiːg

References

1. N31 Wadjiginy at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
2. Ford, Lysbeth J. (1990). The phonology and morphology of Bachamal (Wogait). Canberra: Australian National University.
3. Capell, Arthur (1940). "The Classification of Languages in North and North-west Australia". Oceania. 10 (3): 241–272. doi:10.1002/j.1834-4461.1940.tb00292.x. ISSN   1834-4461.

External links

• Batjamalh at the Dalylanguages.org website.