The Yinggarda language (also written Yingkarta and Inggarda) 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 ...

. It is an

endangered language An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead langu ...

, but efforts at language revival are being made.

Name

"Yinggarda" has been spelt in a number of ways, some linguists (including Dench) writing it as "Yingkarta".

Classification

It is one of the Kartu languages of the Pama–Nyungan family. The ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

'' equates Yinggarda with Pulinya but it is unclear what the basis is for this connection as

Wilfrid Douglas Wilfrid Henry Douglas ("Wilf") (4 July 1917 – 22 March 2004) was a missionary, linguist and translator, and carried out important early work on many indigenous Australian languages. Born in Belfast in 1917, Douglas came to Australia at the age ...

, who recorded the name 'Pulinya,' described it as a name for the old Geraldton language. Unattested Maya (Maia) is reported to have been "like" Yinggarda and may have been a dialect.

Phonology

Consonants

* /ɾ/ can be heard as a trill when preceding consonants, and can also be heard as a glide �when in intervocalic position. * Stops /k, t̪, ʈ/ are heard as �, ð, ɽwhen in intervocalic position.

Vowels

Region

Yinggarda country is around Carnarvon, on the central western coast of Western Australia, and extends inland to near

Gascoyne Junction The Gascoyne region is one of the nine administrative regions of Western Australia. It is located in the northwest of Western Australia, and consists of the local government areas of Carnarvon, Exmouth, Shark Bay and Upper Gascoyne. The Gasco ...

and south to around the mouth of the

Wooramel River The Wooramel River is an ephemeral river in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. The river rises near McLeod Pyramid and flows in a westerly direction, joined by six tributaries including the Wooramel River North, Bilung Creek, One Gum Cre ...

Language revival

A dictionary of Yinggarda by Peter K. Austin was published in 1992. A sketch

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 ...

was written by Alan Dench in 1998, who worked with some of the last speakers and carried out his research mainly in the 1970s and 1980s. The Yamaji Language Centre, now the Irra Wangga Language Centre, has been continuing to work on the Yinggarda language since 1993. , Yinggarda is one of 20 languages prioritised as part of the Priority Languages Support Project, being undertaken by First Languages Australia and funded by the

Department of Communications and the Arts The Australian Department of Communications and the Arts was a department of the Government of Australia charged with responsibility for communications policy and programs and cultural affairs. In December 2019, prime minister Scott Morrison ...

. The project aims to "identify and document critically-endangered languages — those languages for which little or no documentation exists, where no recordings have previously been made, but where there are living speakers".

References

{{Australian Aboriginal languages Kartu languages Endangered indigenous Australian languages in Western Australia