Barngarla, formerly known as Parnkalla, is an Aboriginal language of

Eyre Peninsula The Eyre Peninsula is a triangular peninsula in South Australia. It is bounded by the Spencer Gulf on the east, the Great Australian Bight on the west, and the Gawler Ranges to the north. Earlier called Eyre's Peninsula, it was named after e ...

, South Australia. It was formerly

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

, but has undergone a process of revival since 2012.

Language revival

The last native speaker of the language died in 1964. However, the language has been revived thanks to the work of a German Lutheran pastor

Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann (7 June 1815 – 3 March 1893) was a Lutheran missionary who emigrated to Australia and did fundamental pioneering work, together with his colleague Christian Gottlieb Teichelmann, on recording some Australian languages ...

, who worked at a mission in 1844 and recorded 3,500 (or 2000?) words to form a Barngarla dictionary, entitled ''A Vocabulary of the Parnkalla arngarlaLanguage, Spoken by the Natives Inhabiting the Western Shores of Spencer’s Gulf''. In 2012 the chair of linguistics and endangered languages at the

University of Adelaide The University of Adelaide is a public university, public research university based in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third-oldest university in Australia. Its main campus in the Adelaide city centre includes many Sa ...

Ghil'ad Zuckermann Ghil'ad Zuckermann (, ; ) is an Israeli-born language revivalist and linguist who works in contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity. Zuckermann was awarded the Rubinlicht Prize (2023) "for his researc ...

, started working with the Barngarla community to revive and reclaim the Barngarla language, based on Schürmann's work. Language revival workshops are held in

Port Augusta Port Augusta (''Goordnada'' in the revived indigenous Barngarla language) is a coastal city in South Australia about by road from the state capital, Adelaide. Most of the city is on the eastern shores of Spencer Gulf, immediately south of the ...

Whyalla Whyalla is a city in South Australia. It was founded as Hummock's Hill, and was known by that name until 1916. It is the fourth most populous city in the Australian state of South Australia after Adelaide, Mount Gambier, and Gawler, and along ...

, and

Port Lincoln Port Lincoln is a city on the Lower Eyre Peninsula in the Australian states and territories of Australia, state of South Australia. Known as Galinyala by the traditional owners, the Barngarla people, it is situated on the shore of Boston Bay, ...

several times each year, with funding from the

federal government A federation (also called a federal state) is an entity characterized by a political union, union of partially federated state, self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a #Federal governments, federal government (federalism) ...

's Indigenous Languages Support program. In 2015, linguist Mark Clendon produced a detailed analysis of Schürmann's 1844 grammar of Barngarla (later revised in 2018). This work would expand greatly on Schürmann's documentation by contrasting his work with other Barngarla documentation (such as that of Luise Hercus and Harry Crawford) as well as using comparative linguistics to fill in grammatical gaps within the language thanks to the documentation of other Thura-Yura languages. Notably, this work conflicts both in grammar and orthography with the "revived" form of Barngarla developed by Zuckermann in conjunction with the modern Barngarla community. In October 2016, a mobile app featuring a dictionary of over 3,000 Barngarla words was publicly released. ''Wardlada Mardinidhi'' / ''Barngarla Bush Medicines'', a 24-page book, was published in July 2023. It is the third book co-written by Zuckermann and members of the Richards family of Port Lincoln, this time represented by Evelyn Walker. It records the names a number of native plants from around Port Lincoln in Barngarla,

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

, and English, and describes their use as

bush medicine Bush medicine comprises traditional medicines used by Indigenous Australians, being Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Indigenous people have been using various components of native Australian flora and some fauna as medicine for t ...

. Walker hopes that the book will form part of a program to help youth and others affected by the

Stolen Generations The Stolen Generations (also known as Stolen Children) were the children of Aboriginal Australians, Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian Gover ...

to reconnect with their culture and language, improving their mental health.

Phonology

Consonants

Barngarla has the following consonant phonemes: * All non-velar, nasal and lateral sounds can be prestopped when they occur at the start of a second syllable in a word. * The plosive /ɟ/ is usually realised as an affricate [] or as a plosive with approximant release [] when followed by a vowel.

Vowels

Barngarla has the following vowel phonemes:

Stress

The stress always falls on the first

syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

of each word.

Orthography

Barngarla is written phonetically using an

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

of 27

letters Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech or none in the case of a silent letter; any of the symbols of an alphabet * Letterform, the g ...

, consisting of both single

characters Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to Theoph ...

and digraphs from the

English alphabet Modern English is written with a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 Letter (alphabet), letters, with each having both uppercase and lowercase forms. The word ''alphabet'' is a Compound (linguistics), compound of ''alpha'' and ''beta'', t ...

. Despite being considered letters of Barngarla, "ai" and "aw”, do not denote distinct phonemes. On the contrary, they are in fact nothing more than the sum of their parts. The sound of "ai" is literally just the sound of "a" followed by the sound of "i"; similarly with "aw". One important thing to note is that when there is a sequence of two dental phonemes ("dh", "nh"), the "h" is only written once rather than twice. That is, the sequence /d̪n̪/ is written "dnh" and not "dhnh". Similarly with palatal phonemes ("dy", "ny", "ly") with the "y", ("dny" instead of "dyny"), and with retroflex phonemes ("rd", "rl", "rn") with the "r", ("rdn" instead of "rdrn").

Grammar

Grammatical number

Barngarla has four

grammatical number In linguistics, grammatical number is a Feature (linguistics), feature of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement (linguistics), agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and many other ...

s: singular, dual, plural and superplural. For example: * * * *

Matrilineal and patrilineal distinction

Barngarla is characterised by a

matrilineal Matrilineality, at times called matriliny, is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which people identify with their matriline, their mother's lineage, and which can involve the inheritan ...

and

patrilineal Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritanc ...

distinction. For example, the matrilineal

ergative case In grammar, the ergative case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that identifies a nominal phrase as the agent of a transitive verb in ergative–absolutive languages. Characteristics In such languages, the ergative case is typically m ...

first person

dual Dual or Duals may refer to: Paired/two things * Dual (mathematics), a notion of paired concepts that mirror one another ** Dual (category theory), a formalization of mathematical duality *** see more cases in :Duality theories * Dual number, a nu ...

pronoun ''ngadlaga'' ("we two") would be used by a mother and her child, or by a man and his sister’s child, while the patrilineal form ''ngarrrinyi'' would be used by a father and his child, or by a woman with her brother’s child.

Naming children according to their birth order

In traditional Barngarla, birth order was so important that each child within the family was named according to the order in which they were born. Barngarla has nine male birth order names and nine female birth order names, as following: :Male: ''Biri'' (1st), ''Warri'' (2nd), ''Gooni'' (3rd), ''Mooni'' (4th), ''Mari'' (5th), ''Yari'' (6th), ''Mili'' (7th), ''Wanggooyoo'' (8th) and ''Ngalai'' (9th). :Female: ''Gardanya'' (1st), ''Wayooroo'' (2nd), ''Goonda'' (3rd), ''Moonaga'' (4th), ''Maroogoo'' (5th), ''Yaranda'' (6th), ''Milaga'' (7th), ''Wanggoordoo'' (8th) and ''Ngalaga'' (9th). To determine the suitable name for the newborn Barngarla child, the parents first found out the number of the newborn within the family, and only then selected the male/female name, according to the gender of the newborn. So, for example, if a baby girl was born after three boys, her name would have been ''Moonaga'' (4th born, female) as she was the fourth child within the family.

References

External links

*
Bibliography of Parnkalla language and people resources
at

AIATSIS 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, ...

(archived)

Language resources

*Zuckermann, Ghil'ad and the Barngarla (2019)
''Barngarlidhi Manoo (Speaking Barngarla Together)''
Barngarla Language Advisory Committee.
''Barngarlidhi Manoo'' – Part II
*Zuckermann, Ghil'ad, Emma Richards and the Barngarla (2021)
''Mangiri Yarda (Healthy Country: Barngarla Wellbeing and Nature)''
Revivalistics Press.

Media articles

Reawakening Language
(audio, 41 mins; includes Barngarla sentences spokdn by Ghil'ad Zuckermann)

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is a British Public broadcasting, public service broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception area, language selection and audience reach. It broadcas ...

, 27 January 2016
Waking up Australia's sleeping beauty languages
(audio, 7 mins)

Radio National ABC Radio National, more commonly known as Radio National or simply RN, is an Australian nationwide public service radio network run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). From 1947 until 1985, the network was known as ABC Radio 2. ...

, 25 July 2013
Reclaiming their language
''Port Lincoln Times'', 30 July 2013
Barngarla language app
Transcontinental, 2 August 2016
Group moves to preserve Barngarla language
Transcontinental, 31 July 2013
Native tongue title
(audio, 14 mins) Radio National, 20 October 2012 {{Pama–Nyungan languages, South Thura-Yura languages Language revival Extinct languages of South Australia Reconstructed languages Eyre Peninsula