Jaminjung is a moribund
Australian language
Australia legally has no official language. However, English is by far the most commonly spoken and has been entrenched as the ''de facto'' national language since European settlement. "English has no de jure status but it is so entrenched ...
spoken around the
Victoria River 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 Aust ...
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.
[
]
Phonology
Vowels
Jaminjung has 4 vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
s:Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...
is not distinctive. The close-mid vowel /e/ only appears in a small number of words, and is probably a loan from surrounding languages.
Consonants
Jaminjung has 18 consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...
s:
External links
A corpus of Jaminjung recordings
is archived with the DOBES project.
References
Notes
General
*
*
Yirram languages
Endangered indigenous Australian languages in the Northern Territory
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