Arrernte or Aranda (; ) or sometimes referred to as Upper Arrernte (Upper Aranda), is a
dialect cluster
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...
in the
Arandic language
Arandic is a family of Australian Aboriginal languages consisting of several languages or dialect clusters, including the Arrernte (Upper Arrernte) group, Lower Arrernte (also known as Lower Southern Arrernte), Pertame language (also known as So ...
group spoken in parts of the
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...
, Australia, by the
Arrernte people
The Arrernte () people, sometimes referred to as the Aranda, Arunta or Arrarnta, are a group of Aboriginal Australian peoples who live in the Arrernte lands, at ''Mparntwe'' (Alice Springs) and surrounding areas of the Central Australia regi ...
. Other spelling variations are Arunta or Arrarnta, and all of the dialects have multiple other names.
There are about 1,800 speakers of Eastern/Central Arrernte, making this dialect one of the widest spoken of any Indigenous language in Australia, the one usually referred to as Arrernte and the one described in detail below. It is spoken in the
Alice Springs
Alice Springs ( aer, Mparntwe) is the third-largest town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Known as Stuart until 31 August 1933, the name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William Whitfield Mills after Alice, Lady Todd (''née'' Al ...
area and taught in schools and universities, heard in media and used in local government.
The second biggest dialect in the group is Alyawarre. Some of the other dialects are spoken by very few people, leading to efforts to
revive their usage; others are now completely
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
.
Arrernte/Aranda dialects
![Languages of Central Australia - map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Languages_of_Central_Australia_-_map.jpg)
"Aranda" is a simplified,
Australian English
Australian English (AusE, AusEng, AuE, AuEng, en-AU) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Australia. It is the country's common language and ''de facto'' national language; while Australia has no official language, Engli ...
approximation of the traditional pronunciation of the name of ''Arrernte'' .
''
Glottolog
''Glottolog'' is a bibliographic database of the world's lesser-known languages, developed and maintained first at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute for ...
'' defines the
Arandic group of languages/dialects as comprising 5
Aranda (Arrernte) dialects, plus two distinct languages,
Kaytetye (Koch, 2004) and Lower Southern (or just Lower) Aranda, an extinct language. ''
Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...
'' defines 8 Arandic languages and classifies them slightly differently.
Two dialects are more widely spoken than any of the others:
* Eastern Arrernte (also known as Central Arrernte) dialects include ''Akarre'', ''Antekerrepenh'', ''Ikngerripenhe'', ''Mparntwe Arrernte''. Spoken in the Alice Springs area and others, there were 1,910 speakers in the 2016 census, making it the most widely spoken Arrernte, and Australian Aboriginal, language. This is the dialect most often referred to as "Arrernte" and the strongest of all in the group. There is a project encouraging its use, ''Apmere angkentye-kenhe'',
* Alyawarra dialect is spoken by the
Alyawarra
The Alyawarre, also spelt Alyawarr and also known as the Iliaura, are an Aboriginal Australian people, or language group, from the Northern Territory. The Alyawarre are made up of roughly 1,200 associated peoples and actively engage in local tra ...
people, in the
Sandover and
Tennant Creek
Tennant Creek ( wrm, Jurnkkurakurr) is town located in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is the seventh largest town in the Northern Territory, and is located on the Stuart Highway, just south of the intersection with the western termin ...
areas as well as Queensland. In 2016 there were 1,550 speakers of the language, giving it a status of "Developing". It is similar to Western Arrernte. (Kaytetye is related to this dialect, but is classed as a separate language.
)
All of the other dialects are either threatened or extinct:
*
Andegerebinha (or Antekerrepenhe or Ayerrerenge) was spoken in the
Hay River area (east of Alice Springs), but is now
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
.
** Ayerrerenge, (also known as Yuruwinga, Bularnu and other variations) was spoken by the
Yuruwinga/Yaroinga people is the north-easternmost member of the Arrernte group of languages, and the least studied.
[ It was spoken across the ]Queensland
)
, nickname = Sunshine State
, image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, established_ ...
border in the Headingly, Urandangi
Urandangi (formerly also spelled Urandangie) is an outback town in the locality of Piturie in the Shire of Boulia, Queensland, Australia.
Geography
The town is located on the banks of the Georgina River in Central West Queensland, north west ...
, Lake Nash
Alpurrurulam, from the original Aboriginal name ''Ilperrelhelame'', also known as Lake Nash, is a locality in the Northern Territory of Australia located in the territory's east about south-east of the territory capital of Darwin and about ea ...
, Barkly Downs and Mount Isa
Mount Isa ( ) is a city in the Gulf Country region of Queensland, Australia. It came into existence because of the vast mineral deposits found in the area. Mount Isa Mines (MIM) is one of the most productive single mines in world history, bas ...
areas, and near Mount Hogarth, Bathurst, and
Argadargada in the NT. It is now extinct.[ Breen (2001) says that the language was regarded as the same or similar to Andegerebinha/Antekerrepenhe by some speakers,][ and Glottolog regards it as a dialect of it.][
* Anmatyerr (also spelt Anmatyerre and other variations), divided into Eastern and Western, is spoken by the Anmatyerr (or Anmatjirra) people. The Eastern form seems more closely related to Eastern Arrernte and Southern Alywarre than Western Anmatyerre, which is noticeably different phonetically from other Arandic languages.][ it is spoken in the Mount Allan and northwest Alice Springs regions. With only 640 speakers in the 2016 census, it is regarded as threatened.
* Western Arrarnta (Western Arrernte, Western Aranda, Akara, Southern Aranda, possible sub-dialect ''Akerre''), spoken west of Alice Springs, is nearly extinct, being only spoken by 440 people in 2016. Other terms are ''Tyuretye Arrernte'' and ''Arrernte Alturlerenj''. Breen distinguishes Tyurretye Arrernte (which he initially called Mbunghara) from Western Arrernte, saying that two speakers first recorded, from the Standley Chasm and Mbunghara, was not known until the mid-1980s, and that it may have been the "real" Western Arrernte, before the latter was mixed with Southern Arrernte ( Pertame) at the ]Hermannsburg Mission
The Hermannsburg Mission (german: Hermannsburger Mission) was founded as the Hermannsburg Mission Centre (''Missionsanstalt Hermannsburg'') in 1849 in Hermannsburg, near Celle, North Germany, by Louis Harms. In 1977, the independent mission soc ...
.[ Anna Kenny has noted that the people of the Upper Finke River prefer their language to be known as Western Aranda. This dialect has similarities with Alyawarre and Kaytetye.
]
Sign language
The Arrernte also have a highly developed sign language
Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign l ...
, also known as Iltyeme-iltyeme.
Current usage and tuition
The Northern Territory Department of Education has a program for teaching Indigenous culture and languages, underpinned by a plan entitled ''Keeping Indigenous Languages and Cultures Strong – A Plan for Teaching and Learning of Indigenous Languages and Cultures in the Northern Territory'' with the second stage of the plan running from 2018 to 2020).
The Alice Springs Language Centre delivers language teaching at primary, middle and senior schools, offering Arrernte, Indonesian
Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to:
* Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia
** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago
** Indonesian ...
, Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
, Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
and Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
.
There are two courses teaching Arrernte at tertiary level: at the Batchelor Institute and at Charles Darwin University
Charles Darwin University (CDU) is an Australian public university with a main campus in Darwin and eight satellite campuses in some metropolitan and regional areas. It was established in 2003 after the merger of Northern Territory University, ...
.
There are books available in Arandic languages in the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages
The Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages (LAAL) is a digital archive of literature in endangered languages of Australia, containing works in over forty Australian Aboriginal languages from the Northern Territory, Australia. The project to bui ...
.
Projects are being run to revive dying dialects of the language, such as Southern Arrernte/Pertame.
Eastern/Central Arrernte
Phonology
This description relates to Central or Eastern Arrernte.
Consonants
is described as velar () by , and as uvular () by .
Stops are unaspirated. Prenasalized stops are voiced throughout; prestopped nasals are voiceless during the stop. These sounds arose as normal consonant clusters; Ladefoged states that they now occur initially, where consonant clusters are otherwise forbidden, due to historical loss of initial vowels; however, it has also been argued that such words start with a phonemic schwa, which may not be pronounced (see below).
Vowels
All dialects have at least .
The vowel system of Eastern/Central Arrernte is unusual in that there are only two contrastive vowel phonemes, and . Two-vowel systems are very rare worldwide, but are also found in some Northwest Caucasian languages
The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes ''Pontic languages'' (from the historical region of Pontus, in contrast to ''Caspian languages'' for the Northeast Cauc ...
. It seems that the vowel system derives from an earlier one with more phonemes, but after the development of labialised consonants in the vicinity of round vowels, the vowels lost their roundedness/backness distinction, merging into just two phonemes. There is no allophonic
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...
variation in different consonantal contexts for the vowels. Instead, the phonemes can be realised by various different articulations in free variation
In linguistics, free variation is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers.
Sociolinguists argue that describing such v ...
. For example, the phoneme can be pronounced in any context.[Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996)]
Phonotactics
The underlying syllable structure of Eastern/Central Arrernte is argued to be VC(C), with obligatory codas and no onsets. Underlying phrase-initial is realised as zero, except before a rounded consonant where, by a rounding process of general applicability, it is realised as . It is also common for phrases to carry a final corresponding to no underlying segment.
Among the evidence for this analysis is that some suffixes have suppletive In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irregular" or even ...
variants for monosyllabic and bisyllabic bases. Stems that appear monosyllabic and begin with a consonant in fact select the bisyllabic variant. Stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
falls on the first nucleus
Nucleus ( : nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to:
*Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom
*Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA
Nucle ...
preceded by a consonant, which by this analysis can be stated more uniformly as the second underlying syllable.
And the frequentative
In grammar, a frequentative form ( abbreviated or ) of a word is one that indicates repeated action but is not to be confused with iterative aspect. The frequentative form can be considered a separate but not completely independent word called a ...
is formed by reduplicating the final VC syllable of the verb stem; it does not include the final .
Orthography
Central/Eastern Arrernte orthography does not write word-initial , and adds an ''e'' to the end of every word.
Grammar
Eastern and Central Arrernte has fairly free word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
but tends towards SOV. It is generally ergative, but is accusative
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...
in its pronouns. Pronouns may be marked for duality and skin group
Aboriginal Australian kinship comprises the systems of Aboriginal customary law governing social interaction relating to kinship in traditional Aboriginal cultures. It is an integral part of the culture of every Aboriginal group across Austra ...
.
Pronouns
Pronouns decline with a nominative rather than ergative alignment:
Body parts normally require non-possessive pronouns (inalienable possession
In linguistics, inalienable possession (abbreviated ) is a type of possession in which a noun is obligatorily possessed by its possessor. Nouns or nominal affixes in an inalienable possession relationship cannot exist independently or be "alie ...
), though younger speakers may use possessives in this case too (e.g. or 'my head').
Examples
Cultural references
*Peter Sculthorpe
Peter Joshua Sculthorpe (29 April 1929 – 8 August 2014) was an Australian composer. Much of his music resulted from an interest in the music of countries neighboring Australia as well as from the impulse to bring together aspects of Aborigin ...
's music theatre work ''Rites of Passage
A rite of passage is a ceremony or ritual of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society. In cultural anthropology the term is the Anglicisation of ''rite ...
'' (1972–1973) is written partly in Arrernte and partly in Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
.
*Western and Southern Arrernte were used in parts of the libretto for Andrew Schultz
Andrew Schultz (born 18 August 1960 in Adelaide, South Australia) is an acclaimed Australian classical composer. A musician with a large and widely performed output and an international sphere of activity he has, since 2008, lived in Sydney, New ...
' and Gordon Williams' ''Journey to Horseshoe Bend'', based on the novel by Ted Strehlow
Theodor George Henry Strehlow (6 June 1908 – 3 October 1978) was an Australian anthropologist and linguist. He notably studied the Arrernte (Aranda, Arunta) Aboriginal Australians and their language in Central Australia.
Life
Early life
...
.
Notes
References
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
Arrernte: Data collected on the Arrernte language
(Sorosoro program for linguistic diversity, 2015)
(Omniglot.com)
- with map. (Aboriginal Art and Culture, Alice Springs)
Gavan Breen Eastern Arrernte collection - written materials
(PARADISEC
The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) is a cross-institutional project that supports work on endangered languages and cultures of the Pacific and the region around Australia. They digitise reel-to ...
open-access collection)
*
*
Keeping The Aboriginal Language Strong
(The Spoken Word)
Published
rare items
an
special materials
on Arrernte language and people: bibliographies of items held in the AIATSIS
The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), established as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) in 1964, is an independent Australian Government statutory authority. It is a collecting, ...
library
*
{{Pama–Nyungan languages, Central
Arandic languages
Alice Springs
Arrernte
Indigenous Australian languages in the Northern Territory
Endangered indigenous Australian languages in the Northern Territory
Vertical vowel systems