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Wambaya is a Non-Pama-Nyungan West Barkly Australian language of the Mirndi language group that is spoken in the Barkly Tableland of the Northern Territory, Australia. Wambaya and the other members of the West Barkly languages are somewhat unusual in that they are suffixing languages, unlike most Non-Pama-Nyungan languages which are prefixing.

The language was reported to have 12 speakers in 1981, and some reports indicate that the language went extinct as a first language. However, in the 2011 Australian census 56 people stated that they speak Wambaya at home. That number increased to 61 in the 2016 Census.

Rachel Nordlinger notes that the speech of the Wambaya, Gudanji and Binbinka people "are clearly dialects" of a single language, which she calls "McArthur", while Ngarnga is closely related but is "probably best considered a language of its own".

Phonology

Consonants

• Sounds /ɡ, ŋ/ are heard as palatalized when before front vowels.
• /ɾ/ is heard as a trill when in pre-consonantal position.

Vowels

• /a/ can be heard as when after palatal sounds /ɟ, ɲ/ and before /j/.
• /ɪ/ is heard as when before /j/.

References

1. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2021). "Cultural diversity: Census". Retrieved 13 October 2022.
2. C19 Wambaya 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 Binbinka.
4. ^ Nordlinger, Rachel. (1998), A Grammar Of Wambaya, Northern Territory (Australia), p. 1.
5. Ethnologue
6. Bender, Emily M. (2008), Evaluating a Crosslinguistic Grammar Resource: A Case Study of Wambaya, p. 2
7. "2011 Census QuickStats: Tennant Creek".
8. "2016 Census: Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples QuickStats - Tennant Creek". www.censusdata.abs.gov.au. Retrieved 9 May 2018.
9. Nordlinger, Rachel (1998). A Grammar of Wambaya, Northern Territory (Australia) (PDF). Pacific Linguistics. pp. 2–3.
10. Nordlinger, Rachel (1998). A Grammar Of Wambaya, Northern Territory (Australia). Pacific Linguistics. pp. 17–22.

External links

• Bibliography of Binbinga people and language resources, at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
• Bibliography of Gudanji people and language resources, at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

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