Dhuwal (also Dual, Duala) is one of the

Yolŋu languages Yolŋu Matha (), meaning the 'Yolŋu tongue', is a linguistic family that includes the languages of the Yolngu (also known as the Yolŋu and Yuulngu languages), the indigenous people of northeast Arnhem Land in northern Australia. The ''ŋ'' ...

spoken by

Aboriginal Australians Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Island ...

in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Aus ...

, Australia. Although all Yolŋu languages are

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as a ...

to some extent, Dhuwal represents a distinct

dialect continuum 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 ...

of eight separate varieties.

Dialects

According to linguist Robert M. W. Dixon, *Dialects of the Yirritja moiety are (a) Gupapuyngu and Gumatj; *Dialects of the Dhuwa moiety are (b) Djambarrpuyngu, Djapu, Liyagalawumirr, and Guyamirlili (Gwijamil). *In addition, it would appear that the Dhay'yi (Dayi) dialects, (a) Dhalwangu and (b) Djarrwark, are part of the same language. '' Ethnologue'' divides Dhuwal into four languages, plus Dayi and the contact variety Dhuwaya (numbers are from the 2006 census.): *Dhuwal proper, Datiwuy, Dhuwaya, Liyagawumirr, Marrangu, and Djapu: 600 speakers *Djampbarrpuyŋu, 2,760 speakers *Gumatj, 240 speakers *Gupapuyngu, 330 speakers *Dhay'yi (Dayi) and Dhalwangu, 170 speakers Dhuwaya is a stigmatised contact variant used by the younger generation in informal contexts, and is the form taught in schools, having replaced Gumatj ca. 1990.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Vowel length is contrastive in first syllable only.

Orthography

Probably every Australian language with speakers remaining has had an orthography developed for it, in each case in the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Ita ...

. Sounds not found in English are usually represented by digraphs, or more rarely by

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

s, such as underlines, or extra symbols, sometimes borrowed from the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation of ...

. Some examples are shown in the following table.

References

{{Languages of Australia Yolŋu languages Indigenous Australian languages in the Northern Territory