The Marrku–Wurrugu languages are a possible

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ...

Australian Aboriginal languages 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 ...

spoken in the

Cobourg Peninsula The Cobourg Peninsula is a peninsula located east of Darwin in the Northern Territory, Australia. It is deeply indented with coves and bays, covers a land area of about , and is virtually uninhabited with a population ranging from about 20 ...

region of Western

Arnhem Land Arnhem Land is a historical region of the Northern Territory of Australia. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around from the territorial capital, Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin. In 1623, Dutch East India Compa ...

. They are the extinct Marrgu and Wurrugu languages.Evans, N. (1996). "First and last notes on Wurrugu." University of Melbourne Working Papers in Linguistics, 16, 91–97 They were once classified as distant relatives of the

Iwaidjan languages The Iwaidjan or Yiwaidjan languages are a small family of non-Pama–Nyungan Australian Aboriginal languages spoken in the Cobourg Peninsula region of Western Arnhem Land. In 1997 Nicholas Evans proposed an Arnhem Land family that includes t ...

, until

Nicholas Evans Nicholas Benbow Evans (26 July 1950 – 9 August 2022) was a British journalist, screenwriter, television and film producer and novelist. He was best known for his 1995 debut novel, ''The Horse Whisperer (novel), The Horse Whisperer''. It has s ...

found the evidence for Marrgu's membership insufficient, concluding that similarities were due to borrowing (including of verbal paradigms). The genetic grouping of Marrgu and Wurrugu is supported by the following observations: * Despite being geographically separated by the Garig-Ilgar languages, the two languages share a relatively high cognacy rate (15 out of 43 words = ~35%). * Both languages contain an interdental phoneme h which is absent in the surrounding Iwaidjan languages.

Vocabulary

Capell Capell or Capel is a surname. Notable people with the name include: Capell * Arthur Capell, 1st Baron Capell of Hadham (1608–1649), English politician * Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of Essex (1631–1683), English statesman * Arthur Capell (1902–1 ...

(1942) lists the following basic vocabulary items:Capell, Arthur. 1941-1942, 1942-1943
Languages of Arnhem Land, North Australia
''Oceania'' 12: 364-392, 13: 24-51. :

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Marrku-Wurrugu languages Language families Non-Pama-Nyungan languages Indigenous Australian languages in the Northern Territory