Wajarri language

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Wajarri
Spoken in: Australia 
Region: Murchison area of Western Australia
Total speakers: Possibly 25
Language family: Australian
 Pama-Nyungan
  Southwest
   Kartu
    Wajarri
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: aus
ISO 639-3: wbv

Wajarri is an Australian Aboriginal language. It is one of the Kartu languages of the large South-West branch of the Pama-Nyungan family.

Wajarri country is inland from Geraldton, Western Australia, and extends as far south and west as Mullewa, north to Cascoyne Junction and east to Meekatharra. The Yamaji Language Centre has been carrying out work on the Wajarri language since 1993 and has produced an illustrated wordlist as well as grammatical materials and a dictionary (the latter two unpublished). Sketch grammars of Wajarri have been written by Douglas, published in 1981, and by Marmion in the 1990s (the latter is an unpublished Honors thesis).

People who are Wajarri speakers, or who are descended primarily from Wajarri speakers also refer to themselves as Wajarri. The word for 'man' in Wajarri is yamaji and this word is also commonly used by Wajarri people to refer to themselves. Depending on the context yamaji may also be used to refer to other Aboriginal people, particularly people from the Murchison-Gascoyne region.

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