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The Boonwurrung language, also anglicised as Bunurong, Bun wurrung, and other variant spellings, is an Aboriginal Australian language traditionally spoken by the Boonwurrung people of the Kulin nation of central Victoria prior to European settlement in the colony of Victoria. The last remaining traditional native speakers died in the early 20th century; however there is an active revival movement under way in the Boonwurrung community.

Geographic distribution

Boonwurrung was spoken by six clans along the coast from the Werribee River, across the Mornington Peninsula, Western Port Bay to Wilsons Promontory.

Related languages

Boonwurrung is closely related to the Woiwurrung language, with which it shares over 90% of its vocabulary, and to a lesser degree with Taungurong spoken north of the Great Dividing Range in the area of the Goulburn River. Woiwurrung, Taungurong and Boonwurrung have been considered by linguists to be dialects of a single Central Victorian language, whose range stretched from almost Echuca in the north, to Wilsons Promontory in the south.

R. Brough Smyth wrote in 1878 that "The dialects of the Wooeewoorong or Wawoorong tribe (River Yarra) and the Boonoorong tribe (Coast) are the same. Twenty-three words out of thirty are, making allowances for differences of spelling and pronunciation, identical; five have evidently the same roots, and only two are widely different".

Placenames derived from Bunwurrung language terms

References

1. R. M. W. Dixon, Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development: v. 1 (Cambridge Language Surveys). Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-521-47378-1
2. S35 Boonwurrung at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
3. Other spellings and names include Boonerwrung, Boon Wurrung, Putnaroo, Thurung, Toturin, and Gippsland dialect (AusAnthrop Australian Aboriginal tribal database, Detailed record of the Bunurong Archived July 7, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, AusAnthrop anthropological research, resources and documentation on the Aborigines of Australia. Retrieved May 30, 2012)
6. Allambee at Victorian Places
8. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 February 2017. Retrieved 13 March 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
11. Indigenous and Minority Placenames of Victoria
14. Moorabbin becomes a city
18. Yarragon at Victorian Places

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