The Kokatha language, also written Kukatha, Kokata, Gugada, and other variants, and also referred to as Madutara, Maduwonga, Nganitjidi, Wanggamadu, and Yallingarra and variant spellings of these, 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 ...

of the Western Desert group traditionally spoken by the

Kokatha people The Kokatha, also known as the Kokatha Mula, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of South Australia. They speak the Kokatha language, close to or a dialect of the Western Desert language. Country Traditional Kokatha lands extend o ...

, whose traditional lands are in the western part of the state of

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

, north of the

Wirangu people The Wirangu are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Western coastal region of South Australia. Name Daisy Bates stated that the Wirangu ethnonym was composed of two words: ''wira'' (cloud) and ''wonga'' (speech). Language Wirangu is usua ...

Country

Kokatha was historically spoken in northern western areas of South Australia.

Norman Tindale Norman Barnett Tindale AO (12 October 1900 – 19 November 1993) was an Australian anthropologist, archaeologist, entomologist and ethnologist. Life Tindale was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1900. His family moved to Tokyo and lived ...

recorded Kokatha speakers at Tarcoola,

Kingoonya Kingoonya, originally spelt Kingoonyah, pronounced ( ), was a small settlement, or township, now almost totally abandoned, in the central outback of the Australian state of South Australia. It was established in 1916 as a railway settlement on t ...

Pimba Pimba is a Portuguese type of music with an uptempo style and folk song features, corny romantic or saucy and vulgar lyrics, which is often associated with a poorly educated public from rural areas or suburban poor neighbourhoods. References ...

, and McDouall Peak; west to

Ooldea Ooldea is a tiny settlement in South Australia. It is on the eastern edge of the Nullarbor Plain, west of Port Augusta on the Trans-Australian Railway. Ooldea is from the bitumen Eyre Highway. Being near a permanent waterhole, Ooldea Soak, th ...

; north to

Stuart Range The Stuart Range is a mountain range in central Washington (state), Washington, United States. The range lies within the eastern extent of the Cascade Range immediately southwest of Leavenworth, Washington, Leavenworth and runs east–west. The ...

and Lake Phillipson. At the time of first European contact, their lands appeared to centre on

Mount Eba Mount Eba Station is a pastoral lease in outback South Australia that operates as a sheep station. It is located approximately north west of Roxby Downs and south east of Coober Pedy. It shares boundaries with Millers Creek Station to the ...

, covering surrounding land to

, Tarcoola,

Coober Pedy Coober Pedy () is a town in northern South Australia, north of Adelaide on the Stuart Highway. The town is sometimes referred to as the "opal capital of the world" because of the quantity of precious opals that are mined there. Coober Ped ...

and possibly Ooldea. Today, Kokatha people live in Ceduna,

Koonibba Koonibba is a locality and an associated Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal community in South Australia located about northwest of the state capital of Adelaide city centre, Adelaide and about northwest of the municipal seat in Ceduna, So ...

Port Augusta Port Augusta is a small city in South Australia. Formerly a seaport, it is now a road traffic and railway junction city mainly located on the east coast of the Spencer Gulf immediately south of the gulf's head and about north of the state c ...

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater A ...

and other places around the state.

Classification

Kokatha is a dialect of the Western Desert language group, closely related to other dialects in the group. It is to be distinguished from the two other Western Desert dialects known as Kokatja or Kukatja dialect (A68 and C7 in

AUSTLANG The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), established as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) in 1964, is an independent Australian Government statutory authority. It is a collecting, ...

). Kokatha has also been grouped as a Far West Coast language, together with

Mirning The Mirning, also known as the Ngandatha, are an Aboriginal Australian people whose traditional lands lay on the coastal region of the Great Australian Bight extending from Western Australia into south-west South Australia. Name ''Mirniŋ'' was ...

and Wirangu. In 1972, linguist John Platt published a

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

of the Kokatha language. Platt distinguished two types, Gugada and Gugadja, with Gugadja more like Western Desert than Gugada, which he thought was linked more closely to Wirangu. the distinctions between the two are not clear, but both remain classified as Kokatha by AIATSIS in their AUSTLANG database.

Overlap with other languages

People from Kokatha, Mirning and Wirangu language groups lived at

Koonibba Mission Koonibba is a locality and an associated Aboriginal community in South Australia located about northwest of the state capital of Adelaide and about northwest of the municipal seat in Ceduna and north of the Eyre Highway. The settlement ...

from around 1900, and many

loan word A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...

s moved among the languages there and across the region.PDF
/ref> A wordlist compiled by Pastor August Hoff, Superintendent of Koonibba Mission from 1920 to 1930, between 1920 and 1952 and published by his son Lothar in 2004, included words from the Wirangu, Kokatha and

Pitjantjatjara language Pitjantjatjara (; or ) is a dialect of the Western Desert language traditionally spoken by the Pitjantjatjara people of Central Australia. It is mutually intelligible with other varieties of the Western Desert language, and is particularly ...

s. According to Kokatha woman

Dylan Coleman Dylan David Coleman (born September 16, 1996) is an American professional baseball pitcher for the Kansas City Royals of Major League Baseball (MLB). He made his MLB debut in 2021. Amateur career Coleman attended Potosi High School in Potosi, Mi ...

in her 2010 PhD thesis,

Luise Hercus Luise Anna Hercus , , (16 January 1926 – 15 April 2018) was a German-born linguist who lived in Australia from 1954. After significant early work on Middle Indo-Aryan dialects (Prakrits) she had specialised in Australian Aboriginal languages s ...

' work entitled ''A grammar of the Wirangu language from the west coast of South Australia'' (1999) was based on the words spoken by two fluent Kokatha speakers, who were Coleman's grandmothers. They believed that their input was part of the work to create a Kokatha dictionary, and refuted Hercus' claim that the language was Wirangu, as they had been taught Kokatha language and culture by Kokatha elders for generations.

Language revival

The Mobile Language Team works with the Far West Language Centre in Ceduna in researching the Kokatha language and performing other language-related activities.

Country

Classification

Overlap with other languages

Language revival

References

Further reading