Jaminjung is a moribund

Australian language The languages of Australia are the major historic and current languages used in Australia and its offshore islands. Over 250 Australian Aboriginal languages are thought to have existed at the time of first European contact. English is the majo ...

spoken around the Victoria River in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (abbreviated as NT; known formally as the Northern Territory of Australia and informally as the Territory) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian internal territory in the central and central-northern regi ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. There seems to be a steady increase in the number of speakers of the language with very few people speaking the language in 1967, about 30 speakers in 1991, and between 50 and 150 speakers in 2000. In 1971,

Frances Kofod Frances Mary Kofod is an Australian linguist who works on codifying and preserving Australian indigenous languages of the Kimberley region. She has worked as a research assistant at the University of New England University of New England may refer ...

and others published a grammar of the Ngaliwuru language, while in 2011 a book of Jaminjung & Ngaliwuru names and uses of plants & animals was published.

Phonology

Vowels

Jaminjung has 4

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

Vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual length (phonetics), duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels. On one hand, many ...

is not distinctive. The

close-mid vowel A close-mid vowel (also mid-close vowel, high-mid vowel, mid-high vowel or half-close vowel) is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned about ...

/e/ only appears in a small number of words, and is probably a loan from surrounding languages.

Consonants

Jaminjung has 18

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

External links

A corpus of Jaminjung recordings
is archived with the DOBES project.

References

Notes

General

* * Yirram languages Endangered indigenous Australian languages in the Northern Territory {{ia-lang-stub