| Murrinh-patha | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | Wadeye, Northern Territory, Australia |
| Native speakers | Over 1,500 (date missing) |
| Language family |
Daly?
|
| Writing system | Latin |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | mwf |
Murrinh-patha (literally "language-good"), sometimes also called Garama, is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by over 1,500 people, most of whom live in Wadeye in the Northern Territory, where it is the dominant language of the community. It is spoken by people of the Murrinh-Patha group, as well as several other groups whose languages are extinct or nearly so, including the Mati Ke and Marri-Djabin. Because of its role as the lingua franca in the region, It is one of few Australian Aboriginal languages whose speakers have increased over the past generation.[1]
The Murrinh-Patha language displays extensive classifications both of nouns and verbs. Nouns are divided into ten classes or genders along roughly semantic lines, with some exceptions. Each noun class is associated with particles which must agree with the class. Verbs occur in some 35 different conjugations. Each verb is morphologically complex, with the verb root surrounded by prefixes and suffixes identifying subject, object, tense, and mood; these affixes are different in the different conjugations.