Waanyi, also spelt Wanyi, Wanji or Waanji, is an endangered

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 ...

spoken by the Waanyi people of the lower gulf area of Northern Queensland, Australia. Although earlier thought to be extinct, as of the

2016 Australian census The 2016 Australian census was the 17th national population census held in Australia. The census was officially conducted with effect on Tuesday, 9 August 2016. The total population of the Commonwealth of Australia was counted as – an incr ...

there were 16 speakers of the language. This was down from the recorded peak of 40 in the

2011 Australian census The Census in Australia, officially the Census of Population and Housing, is the national census in Australia that occurs every five years. The census collects key demographic, social and economic data from all people in Australia on census nig ...

. The language region includes the western parts of Lawn Hill Creek and Nicholson River, from about the boundary between the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Au ...

and Queensland, westwards towards Alexandria station,

Doomadgee Doomadgee is a town and a locality in the Aboriginal Shire of Doomadgee, Queensland, Australia. It is a mostly Indigenous community, situated about from the Northern Territory border, and west of Burketown. The settlement began with the esta ...

, and Nicholson River. It includes the local government area of the Aboriginal Shire of Doomadgee. Words and phrases from this language are used by novelist

Alexis Wright Alexis Wright (born 25 November 1950) is a Waanyi (Aboriginal Australian) writer best known for winning the Miles Franklin Award for her 2006 novel '' Carpentaria'' and the 2018 Stella Prize for her "collective memoir" of Leigh Bruce "Tracke ...

in her 2013 novel, '' The Swan Book''.

Phonology

Phoneme inventoryBreen, Gavan (2003)."Wanyi and Garrwa comparative data" in Evans, N., ed. "The Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages of Northern Australia: comparative studies of the continent’s most linguistically complex region". ''Studies in Language Change'', 552. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, pp.425-462 Phonemic long vowels are rare.

References

{{Australian Aboriginal languages Garawan languages