Garadjari (Karajarri, many other spellings; see below) is an
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 ...
spoken by the
Karajarri
The Karajarri are an Aboriginal Australian people, who once lived south-west of the Kimberleys in the northern Pilbara region, predominantly between the coastal area and the Great Sandy Desert. They now mostly reside at Bidyadanga, south of Br ...
people. The language is a member of the
Marrngu subgroup of the
Pama-Nyungan family. It is spoken along the coast of northwestern Australia.
Name
The name has many spelling variants, including:
*''Garadjari'' (used by ''A Grammar of Garadjari'')
*''Garadjiri''
*''Garadyari''
*''Garadyaria''
*''Gard'are''
*''Karadjeri'' (used by
Ethnologue)
*''Karajarri'' (used by the ''Handbook of Western Australian Aboriginal languages'' and is the spelling selected by the Karajarri people for their native title claims
)
*''Karatjarri'' (used by ''Australian Languages'')
*''Karatyarri''
*''Karrajarra''
*''Karrajarri''
Kurajarra
The Kurajarra were an Aboriginal Australian people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
Their existence as a people was overlooked in Norman Tindale's classic 1974 survey of Australian Aboriginal tribal groups and their language is u ...
/ Guradjara is sometimes confused with Garadjari, but it appears to have been a separate language.
Phoneme inventory
Garadjari's phoneme inventory is typical of Australian languages, and is identical to the inventories of the other Marrngu languages. There are 17 consonant phonemes.
Also typical of Australian languages, there are only three vowel phonemes.
References
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*
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Notes
Marrngu languages
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