Ngaanyatjarra (; also Ngaanyatjara, Ngaanjatjarra) is a dialect of the
Western Desert language
The Western Desert language, or Wati, is a dialect cluster of Australian Aboriginal languages in the Pama–Nyungan family.
The name ''Wati'' tends to be used when considering the various varieties to be distinct languages, ''Western Desert'' w ...
spoken primarily by the
Ngaanyatjarra people.
It is very similar to its close neighbour
Ngaatjatjarra
The Ngaatjatjarra (otherwise spelt Ngadadjara) are an Indigenous Australian people of Western Australia, with communities located in the north eastern part of the Goldfields-Esperance region.
Name
The ethnonym Ngaatjatjarra essentially translat ...
, with which it is highly
mutually intelligible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...
.
Name
The name ''Ngaanyatjarra'' derives from the word 'this' which, combined with the
comitative suffix means 'having (as the word for 'this')'. This distinguishes it from its near neighbour Ngaatjatjarra, which has for 'this'.
Phonology
Orthography
An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis.
Most national ...
is in brackets.
Vowels
* Before alveolar consonants, the two vowels are pronounced as .
* Before velar consonants, the three vowels are pronounced as .
* Vowel sounds are rhotacized when preceding retroflex consonants.
Consonants
* Laminal stop sounds tend to vary, across the dialects of Ngaanyatjarra. In the Western dialects, they are always pronounced as dental, and in the Eastern dialects they are pronounced as palatal. Yet they are still orthographically transcribed the same as palatal sounds, as in the other dialects.
*When occurring after nasal sounds, stop consonants become slightly voiced.
Sample text in Ngaanyatjarra
[https://omniglot.com/writing/ngaanyatjarra.htm]
Notes
Citations
Sources
*
*
*
*
External links
* ELAR archive o
Western Desert Special Speech Styles Project
{{Pama–Nyungan languages, Central
Western Desert language