Ngaatjatjarra (also ''Ngaatjatjara'', ''Ngaadadjarra'') is an
Australian Aboriginal 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 ...
. It is spoken in the
Western Desert cultural bloc
The Western Desert cultural bloc (also capitalised, abbreviated to WDCB, or just Western Desert) is a cultural area, cultural region in central Australia covering about , used to describe a group of linguistically and culturally similar Aborigin ...
which covers about 600,000 square kilometres of the central and central-western desert.
It is very similar to its close neighbours
Ngaanyatjarra,
Pitjantjatjara and
Pintupi
The Pintupi are an Australian Aboriginal group who are part of the Western Desert cultural group and whose traditional land is in the area west of Lake Macdonald and Lake Mackay in Western Australia. These people moved (or were moved) into th ...
, with which it is highly mutually intelligible.
Most
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 ...
live in the communities of
Warburton,
Warakurna,
Tjukurla or
Kaltukatjara.
Name
The name ''Ngaatjatjarra'' derives from the word ''ngaatja'' 'this' which, combined with the
comitative suffix ''-tjarra'' means something like ngaatja''-having'. This distinguishes it from its near neighbour
Ngaanyatjarra which has ''ngaanya'' for 'this'.
Phonology
Vowels
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.
Sign language
The Ngaatjatjarra have (or had) a
signed form of their language, though it is not clear from records that it was particularly well-developed compared to other
Australian Aboriginal sign languages
Many Australian Aboriginal cultures have or traditionally had a manually coded language, a sign language, signed counterpart of their oral language. This appears to be connected with various avoidance speech, speech taboos between certain kin o ...
.
[ Kendon, A. (1988) ''Sign Languages of Aboriginal Australia: Cultural, Semiotic and Communicative Perspectives.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press]
References
* DOUSSET Laurent 2002. Politics and demography in a contact situation: The establishment of Giles Meteorological Station in the Rawlinson Ranges, Aboriginal History, 26: 1-22.
* DOUSSET Laurent 2003. On the misinterpretation of the Aluridja kinship system type (Australian Western Desert), Social Anthropology, 11(1): 43-61.
* DOUSSET Laurent 2005. Structure and Substance: Combining ‘Classic’ and ‘Modern’ Kinship Studies in the Australian Western Desert, TAJA, 16(1): 18-30.
* DOUSSET L. 2003. Indigenous modes of representing social relationships: A short critique of the “genealogical concept”, Aboriginal Studies, 2003/1: 19-29.
* GLASS A. & HACKETT D. 2003. Ngaanyatjarra & Ngaatjatjarra to English dictionary. Alice Springs: IAD.
* GOULD R.A. 1968. Living Archaeology: The Ngatatjara of Western Australia, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 24(2): 101-122.
* GOULD R.A. 1969. Subsistence behavior among the Western desert Aborigines of Australia, Oceania, 39(4): 253-274.
External links
AusAnthrop database: Ngaatjatjarra*
ttp://elar.soas.ac.uk/deposit/0342 ELAR archive of Western Desert Special Speech Styles Project
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Western Desert language