Ngaanyatjarra language

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Ngaanyatjarra
Spoken in:	Western Australia
Total speakers:	1200
Language family:	Australian Pama-Nyungan South-West Wati Ngaanyatjarra
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`aus`
ISO 639-3:	`ntj`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Ngaanyatjarra (also Nyanganyatjara, Ngaanyatjara, Ngaanjatjarra) is an Australian Aboriginal language. It is one of the Wati languages of the large South-West branch of the Pama-Nyungan family. It is one of the dialects of the Western Desert Language and is very similar to its close neighbour Ngaatjatjarra, with which it is highly mutually intelligible.

Most Ngaanyatjarra people live in one of the communities of Warburton, Warakurna, Tjukurla, Papulankutja (Blackstone), Mantamaru (Jameson) or Kaltukatjara (Docker River). Some have moved to Cosmo Newberry and Laverton in the Eastern Goldfields area of Western Australia.

[edit] Origin of the name

The name Ngaanyatjarra derives from the word ngaanya 'this' which, combined with the comitative suffix -tjarra means something like ' ngaanya-having'. This distinguishes it from its near neighbour Ngaatjatjarra which has ngaatja for 'this'.

[edit] References

Glass, Amee and Hackett, Dorothy. 1979. Ngaanyatjarra texts. New Revised edition of Pitjantjatjara texts (1969). Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra. ISBN 0-391-01683-0.
Glass, Amee and Hackett, Dorothy. 2003. Ngaanyatjarra & Ngaatjatjarra to English Dictionary. IAD press, Alice Springs. ISBN 1-86465-053-2