Wagiman

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Wagiman

Spoken in

Australia (Region: Northern Territory )
speaker 2 (2020)
Linguistic
classification
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

waq

The spread of Wagiman in Australia

Wagiman belongs to the Gunwinyguan languages ​​and is spoken by the Aborigines of the same name in the Northern Territory of Australia . This language is seriously endangered as there were only about 10 speakers left in 2000 .

history

Before the colonization of Australia , the Wagiman land covered several hundred square kilometers, which is why the language was correspondingly widespread. However, in the course of colonization, their language was more and more replaced by English and is therefore endangered today. Another reason Wagiman became extinct is that most native Aborigines use the more common Mayali instead of Wagiman . Today there are only about 10 speakers left, which is why the Wagiman 2010 also received an entry in an article by the Society for Threatened Peoples that deals with threatened languages .

grammar

morphology

Wagiman is a language very rich in morphemes . Morphemes are used here with a large number of words to provide further information on the context.

noun

Nouns often end with morphemes in Wagiman to give more information about the noun itself. An example:

Katherine-gunda ba-di-nya-ma.
They came from Katherine.

The morpheme -gunda was added to the place name Katherine . This represents the ablative and informs you that they came from Katherine.

Verbs

Verbs, like nouns, also largely consist of compound morphemes. An example:

Lagiban-buga-yi ba-nawu-jan bakga.
The Aborigines tried to give him tobacco.

Here the verb ba-nawu-jan means that they were trying to give something. Da ba- indicates that it was they who did it. -nawu- represents the actual verb to give . The last part of the word, -jan , indicates that what they did happened in the past. This structure of the verb (1st morpheme: who? 2nd morpheme: what? 3rd morpheme: when?) Is typical of the Wagiman language and occurs very frequently.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Society for Threatened Peoples: Threatened Languages ​​- Danger for Minorities Worldwide , March 2010
  2. ↑ [1]
  3. ↑ a b Stephen Wilson: The language and its speakers ( Memento of the original from September 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www1.aiatsis.gov.au archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , April 2001