Wambaya | |
---|---|
McArthur River | |
Native to | Australia |
Region | Barkly Tableland, Northern Territory |
Ethnicity | Wambaya, Gudanji, Binbinga |
Native speakers | 43 (2021 census) [1] (24 Wambaya; 19 Gudanji) |
Dialects |
|
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | Either: wmb – Wambaya nji – Gudanji |
Glottolog | wamb1258 |
AIATSIS [2] | C19 Wambaya, C26 Gurdanji, N138 Binbinga |
ELP | Wambaya |
Binbinka [3] |
Wambaya is a Non-Pama-Nyungan West Barkly Australian language of the Mirndi language group [4] that is spoken in the Barkly Tableland of the Northern Territory, Australia. [5] Wambaya and the other members of the West Barkly languages are somewhat unusual in that they are suffixing languages, unlike most Non-Pama-Nyungan languages which are prefixing. [4]
The language was reported to have 12 speakers in 1981, and some reports indicate that the language went extinct as a first language. [6] However, in the 2011 Australian census 56 people stated that they speak Wambaya at home. [7] That number increased to 61 in the 2016 Census. [8]
Rachel Nordlinger notes that the speech of the Wambaya, Gudanji and Binbinka people "are clearly dialects" of a single language, which she calls "McArthur", while Ngarnga is closely related but is "probably best considered a language of its own". [9]
Peripheral | Laminal | Apical | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labial | Velar | Palatal | Alveolar | Retroflex | |
Stop | b | ɡ | ɟ | d | ɖ |
Nasal | m | ŋ | ɲ | n | ɳ |
Lateral | ʎ | l | ɭ | ||
Rhotic | ɾ ~ r | ɻ | |||
Approximant | w | j |
Front | Back | |
---|---|---|
High | ɪ, iː | ʊ, uː |
Low | a, aː |
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