Jaminjung language

Mirndi language of Australia

Jaminjung is a moribund Australian language spoken around the Victoria River in the Northern Territory of Australia. There seems to be a steady increase in the number of speakers of the language with very few people speaking the language in 1967, about 30 speakers in 1991, and between 50 and 150 speakers in 2000.^[4][1]

Phonology

Vowels

Jaminjung has 4 vowels:^[5]

Vowel length is not distinctive. The close-mid vowel /e/ only appears in a small number of words, and is probably a loan from surrounding languages.^[5]

Consonants

Jaminjung has 18 consonants:^[5]

External links

• A corpus of Jaminjung recordings is archived with the DOBES project.

References

Notes

1. Jaminjung at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
2. N18 Jaminjung at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies  (see the info box for additional links)
3. Endangered Languages Project data for Ngaliwurru.
4. Schultze-Berndt 2000, pp. 13–14
5. Schultze-Berndt 2000, p. 41

General

• Schultze-Berndt, Eva F. (2000). Simple and Complex Verbs in Jaminjung - A Study of event categorisation in an Australian language (Thesis). Radboud University. hdl:2066/147040. ISBN 90-76203-09-1.
• Jones, Judy Merchant (2011). Jaminjung, Ngaliwurru and Nungali plants and animals : Aboriginal knowledge of flora and fauna from the Bradshaw and Judbarra/Gregory National Park area, north Australia. Northern Territory Botanical bulletin. Vol. 38. ISBN 9781921519499.