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Barngarla language
Revived Aboriginal language of South Australia From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Barngarla, formerly known as Parnkalla, is an Aboriginal language of Eyre Peninsula, South Australia. It was formerly extinct, but has undergone a process of revival since 2012.
 | This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. (November 2024) |
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Language revival
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The last native speaker of the language died in 1964. However, the language has been revived thanks to the work of a German Lutheran pastor Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann, who worked at a mission in 1844 and recorded 3,500 (or 2000?[2]) words to form a Barngarla dictionary,[3] entitled A Vocabulary of the Parnkalla [Barngarla] Language, Spoken by the Natives Inhabiting the Western Shores of Spencer’s Gulf.[4]
In 2012[4] the chair of linguistics and endangered languages at the University of Adelaide, Ghil'ad Zuckermann, started working with the Barngarla community to revive and reclaim the Barngarla language, based on Schürmann's work.[5][6] Language revival workshops are held in Port Augusta, Whyalla, and Port Lincoln several times each year, with funding from the federal government's Indigenous Languages Support program.[4]
In 2015, linguist Mark Clendon produced a detailed analysis of Schürmann's 1844 grammar of Barngarla (later revised in 2018).[7] This work would expand greatly on Schürmann's documentation by contrasting his work with other Barngarla documentation (such as that of Luise Hercus and Harry Crawford) as well as using comparative linguistics to fill in grammatical gaps within the language thanks to the documentation of other Thura-Yura languages. Notably, this work conflicts both in grammar and orthography with the "revived" form of Barngarla developed by Zuckermann in conjunction with the modern Barngarla community.
In October 2016, a mobile app featuring a dictionary of over 3,000 Barngarla words was publicly released.[8]
Wardlada Mardinidhi / Barngarla Bush Medicines, a 24-page book, was published in July 2023. It is the third book co-written by Zuckermann and members of the Richards family of Port Lincoln, this time represented by Evelyn Walker. It records the names a number of native plants from around Port Lincoln in Barngarla, Latin, and English, and describes their use as bush medicine. Walker hopes that the book will form part of a program to help youth and others affected by the Stolen Generations to reconnect with their culture and language, improving their mental health.[2]
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Phonology
Consonants
Barngarla has the following consonant phonemes:[9]
Vowels
Barngarla has the following vowel phonemes:[9]
Stress
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Orthography
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Barngarla is written phonetically using an alphabet of 27 letters, consisting of both single characters and digraphs from the English alphabet.[10][9]
Despite being considered letters of Barngarla, "ai" and "aw”, do not denote distinct phonemes. On the contrary, they are in fact nothing more than the sum of their parts. The sound of "ai" is literally just the sound of "a" followed by the sound of "i"; similarly with "aw".
One important thing to note is that when there is a sequence of two dental phonemes ("dh", "nh"), the "h" is only written once rather than twice. That is, the sequence /d̪n̪/ is written "dnh" and not "dhnh". Similarly with palatal phonemes ("dy", "ny", "ly") with the "y", ("dny" instead of "dyny"), and with retroflex phonemes ("rd", "rl", "rn") with the "r", ("rdn" instead of "rdrn").
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Grammar
Grammatical number
Barngarla has four grammatical numbers: singular, dual, plural and superplural.[11]: 227–228 For example:
Matrilineal and patrilineal distinction
Barngarla is characterised by a matrilineal and patrilineal distinction. For example, the matrilineal ergative case first person dual pronoun ngadlaga ("we two") would be used by a mother and her child, or by a man and his sister’s child, while the patrilineal form ngarrrinyi would be used by a father and his child, or by a woman with her brother’s child.[12]: 7
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Naming children according to their birth order
In traditional Barngarla, birth order was so important that each child within the family was named according to the order in which they were born. Barngarla has nine male birth order names and nine female birth order names, as following:[10]: 42
- Male: Biri (1st), Warri (2nd), Gooni (3rd), Mooni (4th), Mari (5th), Yari (6th), Mili (7th), Wanggooyoo (8th) and Ngalai (9th).
- Female: Gardanya (1st), Wayooroo (2nd), Goonda (3rd), Moonaga (4th), Maroogoo (5th), Yaranda (6th), Milaga (7th), Wanggoordoo (8th) and Ngalaga (9th).[10]: 42
To determine the suitable name for the newborn Barngarla child, the parents first found out the number of the newborn within the family, and only then selected the male/female name, according to the gender of the newborn. So, for example, if a baby girl was born after three boys, her name would have been Moonaga (4th born, female) as she was the fourth child within the family.[citation needed]
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References
Further reading
External links
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