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Wambaya language

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Wambaya
Native toAustralia
RegionBarkly Tableland, Northern Territory
EthnicityBinbinga Indigenous Australians
Native speakers
61 (2016 census)[1]
Dialects
  • Wambaya
  • Gudanji
  • Binbinka
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
wmb – Wambaya
nji – Gudanji
Glottologguda1245
AIATSIS[2]C19 Wambaya, C26 Gurdanji, N138 Binbinga
ELPWambaya

Wambaya is a Non-Pama-Nyungan West Barkly Australian language of the Mirndi language group[3] that is spoken in the Barkly Tableland of the Northern Territory, Australia.[4] Wambaya and the other members of the West Barkly languages are somewhat unusual in that they are suffixing languages, unlike most Non-Pama-Nyungan languages which are prefixing.[3]

The language was reported to have 12 speakers in 1981, and some reports indicate that the language went extinct as a first language.[5] However, in the 2011 Australian census 56 people stated that they speak Wambaya at home.[6] That number increased to 61 in the 2016 Census.[7]

Rachel Nordlinger believes that Wambaya, Gudanji and Binbinka are dialects of one language.[8]

References

  1. ^ "Census 2016, Language spoken at home by Sex (SA2+)". stat.data.abs.gov.au. ABS. Retrieved 2017-10-30.
  2. ^ C19 Wambaya at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies  (see the info box for additional links)
  3. ^ a b Nordlinger, Rachel. (1998), A Grammar Of Wambaya, Northern Territory (Australia), p. 1.
  4. ^ Ethnologue
  5. ^ Bender, Emily M. (2008), Evaluating a Crosslinguistic Grammar Resource: A Case Study of Wambaya, p. 2
  6. ^ http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2011/quickstat/SSC70177?opendocument&navpos=220
  7. ^ "2016 Census: Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples QuickStats - Tennant Creek". www.censusdata.abs.gov.au. Retrieved 2018-05-09.
  8. ^ Nordlinger, Rachel. (1998), A Grammar Of Wambaya, Northern Territory (Australia), p. 3.