Wambaya language

Wambaya
Native to Australia
Region Barkly Tableland, Northern Territory
Ethnicity Binbinga Indigenous Australians
Native speakers
 20 (2005) to 88  (2006 census)[1]
Dialects
Wambaya
Gudanji
Binbinka
Language codes
ISO 639-3 Either:
wmb – Wambaya
nji – Gudanji
Glottolog guda1245[2]
AIATSIS[1] C19 Wambaya, C26 Gurdanji, N138 Binbinga, N121 Ngarnga

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 unique in that they are suffixing languages, unlike most Non-Pama-Nyungan languages which are prefixing.[5]

The language was reported to have 12 speakers in 1981, and some reports indicate that the language went extinct as a first language.[6] However in the 2011 Australian census 56 people stated that they speak Wambaya at home.[7] That number increased to 89 by 2013 (http://www.ethnologue.com/language/wmb).

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

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Wambaya at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies  (see the info box for additional links)
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Gudanji–Binbinga–Wambaya". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. ↑ Nordlinger, Rachel. (1998), A Grammar Of Wambaya, Northern Territory (Australia), p. 1.
  4. ↑ Ethnologue
  5. ↑ Nordlinger, Rachel. (1998), A Grammar Of Wambaya, Northern Territory (Australia), p. 1.
  6. ↑ Bender, Emily M. (2008), Evaluating a Crosslinguistic Grammar Resource: A Case Study of Wambaya, p. 2
  7. ↑ http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2011/quickstat/SSC70177?opendocument&navpos=220
  8. ↑ Nordlinger, Rachel. (1998), A Grammar Of Wambaya, Northern Territory (Australia), p. 3.