Barranbinja or Barrabinya is an extinct

Australian Aboriginal language The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

. The last speaker was probably Mrs Emily Margaret Horneville (d. 1979), who was recorded by Lynette Oates who then published a short description of it. It had also been recorded by R.H. Mathews along with

Muruwari The Muruwari, also spelt Murawari, Murawarri, Murrawarri and other variants, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of New South Wales and the southwestern area of Queensland. Language A monograph on and a dictionary of Muruwari have ...

, though not all items in his wordlist were recognised by Mrs Horneville. Both Mathews and Oates conclude that Barranbinya and

were in a dialect relation.

Relationship with other languages

Lynette Oates' work on

and Barranbinya gives a cognate count of 44% between the two varieties, concluding that both were likely in a dialect relation.

R.H. Mathews Robert Hamilton Mathews (1841–1918) was an Australian surveyor and self-taught anthropologist who studied the Aboriginal cultures of Australia, especially those of Victoria (Australia), Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, southern Que ...

(1903), who recorded both Muruwari and Barranbinya, also commented that besides vocabulary differences, the grammar of both Muruwari and Barranbinya were essentially the same. Together, Muruwari and Barranbinya form an isolate group within the Pama-Nyungan language family, and were very different in many respects from their geographic neighbours (which belong to many different Pama-Nyungan subgroups). For more information, see the description for

Phonology

Phonemic inventory

The phonemic inventory is very similar to Muruwari, although the relative paucity of data means that the status of many phonemes is not clear (in round brackets). All phonemes except those with a star (*) may be word-initial.

Phonotactics

Nearly all words end in a vowel, though there are some rare occurrences of word-final -ny and -n, which is in stark contrast with neighbouring Muruwari and

Ngiyambaa The Ngiyambaa language, also spelt Ngiyampaa, Ngempa, Ngemba and other variants, is a Pama–Nyungan language of the Wiradhuric subgroup. It was the traditional language of the Wangaibon and Weilwan peoples of New South Wales, Australia, b ...

, where word-final nasals and

approximants Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a ...

are very common. Oates speculates that this may be he result of influence from

Paakantyi The Paakantyi, or Barkindji or Barkandji, are an Australian Aboriginal tribal group of the Darling River (known to them as the Baaka) basin in Far West New South Wales, Australia. Name The ethnonym Paakantyi means "River people", formed from ...

and other western languages, which also display a preference for word-final vowels.

References

{{Australian Aboriginal languages Central New South Wales languages Extinct languages of New South Wales