Jaminjung language

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]

Jaminjung
Native to	Australia
Region	Victoria River (Northern Territory)
Native speakers	29 (2016)[1]
Language family	Mirndi Yirram Jaminjung
Dialects	Ngaliwuru
Language codes
ISO 639-3	djd
Glottolog	djam1255
AIATSIS[2]	N18 Jaminjung, N19 Ngaliwurru
ELP	Jaminjung
	Ngaliwurru[3]
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In 1971, Frances Kofod and others published a grammar of the Ngaliwuru language,^[5] while in 2011 a book of Jaminjung & Ngaliwuru names and uses of plants & animals was published.^[6]

Phonology

Vowels

Jaminjung has 4 vowels:^[7]

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i /i/		u /u/
Close-mid	e /e/
Open		a /a/

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.^[7]

Consonants

Jaminjung has 18 consonants:^[7]

	Peripheral		Laminal		Apical
	Bilabial	Velar	Palatal	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex
Plosive	p /p/	k /k/	j /c/	th /t̪/	t /t/	rt /ʈ /
Nasal	m /m/	ng /ŋ/	ny /ɲ/		n /n/	rn /ɳ /
Trill					rr /r/
Approximant			ly /ʎ/		l /l/	rl /ɭ /
	w /w/		y /j/		r /ɻ /

External links

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