Yanyuwa Language

Yanyuwa () is the language of the Yanyuwa people of the Sir Edward Pellew Group of Islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria outside Borroloola () in the Northern Territory, Australia.

Yanyuwa, like many other Australian Aboriginal languages, is a highly agglutinative language with ergative-absolutive alignment, whose grammar is pervaded by a set of 16 noun classes whose agreements are complicated and numerous.

Yanyuwa is a critically endangered language. The anthropologist John Bradley has worked with the Yanyuwa people for three decades and is also a speaker of Yanyuwa. He has produced a large dictionary and grammar of the language, along with a cultural atlas in collaboration with a core group of senior men and women.

Classification

Dixon (2002), who rejects the validity of Pama–Nyungan, accepts that Yanyuwa is demonstrably related to Warluwara and languages closely related to it.

Speech styles

In Yanyuwa, certain words have synonyms used to replace the everyday term in certain cultural situations.

Avoidance speech

Avoidance speech is speech style used when talking to or near certain relatives: one's siblings and cousins of the opposite sex, one's brother-in-law, sister-in-law, father-in-law and mother-in-law, and one's nieces and nephews if their father (for male speakers) or their mother (for female speakers) has died. Occasionally, avoidance speech takes the form of different affixes to usual speech, but generally, it is simply a change in vocabulary.

For example, a digging stick is usually referred to as , but when talking to one of the above relatives, the word used is .

An example of avoidance speech is given below:

Ritual speech

Another set of vocabulary is used during ceremonies and other ritual occasions. Many of the words used in ritual speech are sacred and kept secret.

For example, a dingo is usually referred to as , but during ritual occasions, the word used is . That is one ritual term which is known to the general public, as are some other terms for flora and fauna.

Island speech

When on the Sir Edward Pellew Group of Islands, which is part of Yanyuwa territory, another set of vocabulary may be used to replace the terms used when on the mainland. There is more variance about the usage of island speech than the other speech styles.

For example, on the mainland, fishing is referred to as , but on the islands, the word used is .

Phonology

Yanyuwa is extremely unusual in having 7 places of articulation for stops, compared to 3 for English and 4–6 for most other Australian languages. In common with many other Australian languages, it does not observe a voicing distinction between consonants.

Consonants

Vowels

Morphology

Noun classes

Yanyuwa has 16 noun classes, distinguished by prefixes. In some cases, different prefixes are used, depending on whether the speaker is a male or a female.

Notes

: Women's speech.
: Men's speech.
: is a more formal female/feminine prefix often used in elicitations, and is the informal everyday form. There is only one word in Yanyuwa, "girl", in which the prefix is always used. That distinguishes it from the men's speech form "boy" for which women say .
: is used to indicate no prefix.

Male and female dialects

Yanyuwa is unusual among languages of the world in that it has separate dialects for men and for women at the morphological level. The only time that men use the women's dialect is if they are quoting someone of the opposite sex and vice versa.
An example of this speech is provided below:

The BBC reported in 2018 that there were 3 fluent female speakers worldwide.

Media

Films

Yanyuwa-speakers have actively engaged in making a number of films, and more recently have begun a project to animate important stories and songlines. These include three important films, all of which have extensive narratives in Yanyuwa, with subtitles:
* '' – Two Laws'',
* '' – Journey East'',
* '' – Aeroplane Dance''.

Music

Singer Shellie Morris released in May 2013 a song album '' – Together We are Strong'', with songs in Yanyuwa.CD Launch "Ngambala Wiji Li-Wunungu — Together We are Strong"

References

External links

demonstrating the seven POAs.
Yanyuwa Wuka: Language from Yanyuwa Country – a Yanyuwa Dictionary and Cultural Resource

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yanyuwa Language
Agglutinative languages
Ngarna languages
Endangered indigenous Australian languages in the Northern Territory