Amurdag language

Amurdag
Spoken in	Oenpelli, Goulburn Island, Northern Territory
Native speakers	1  (date missing)
Language family	Iwaidjan Amurdag
Language codes
ISO 639-3	amg

Amurdag (also Amurdak, Amurag, Amarag, Wureidbug) is an Indigenous Australian language historically spoken in the Northern Territory of Australia. According to a report by the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, it is an endangered language. There is at least one living speaker, Charlie Mungulda, who has been working with Australian linguists, e.g. Nick Evans, Robert Handelsmann and others, over the past several decades to record his language.

Phonology

Consonants

	Peripheral		Laminal	Apical
	Bilabial	Velar	Palatal	Alveolar	Retroflex
Plosive	p	k	c	t	ʈ
Nasal	m	ŋ	ɲ	n	ɳ
Approximant	w	ɣ	j		ɻ
Trill				r
Flap					ɽ
Lateral			(ʎ)	l	ɭ
Lateral flap				ɺ ⟨ld⟩	ɺ˞ ⟨rld⟩

Evans but not Mailhammer identifies a palatal lateral /ʎ/ in Amurdag.

Vowels

Mailhammer (2009) does not provide a vowel inventory but Evans (1998) briefly discusses vowels in his paper, noting that Iwaidjan languages including Amurdak have a three vowel (/a/, /i/, /u/) system.

Further reading

• Evans, Nicholas (1998). "Iwaidja mutation and its origins". In Anna Siewierska & Jae Jung Song. Case, Typology and Grammar: In honor of Barry J. Blake. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 115–149.
• Handelsmann, R. (1991). Towards a description of amurdak: a language of northern australia.Honours thesis, University of Melbourne,
• Mailhammer, R. (2009) 'Towards an Aspect-Based Analysis of the Verb Categories of Amurdak', Australian Journal of Linguistics, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 349-391.
• Neidjie, B., Mulurinj, N., Mailhammer, R., & Handelsmann, R. (2009). Amurdak inyman : six stories in amurdak. Darwin: