The Kokatha language, also written Kukatha, Kokata, Gugada, and other variants, and also referred to as Madutara, Maduwonga, Nganitjidi, Wanggamadu, and Yallingarra and variant spellings of these, is an Australian Aboriginal language of the Western Desert group traditionally spoken by the Kokatha people, whose traditional lands are in the western part of the state of

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

, north of the

Wirangu people The Wirangu are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Western coastal region of South Australia. Name Daisy Bates stated that the Wirangu ethnonym was composed of two words: ''wira'' (cloud) and ''wonga'' (speech). Language Wirangu is usual ...

Country

Kokatha was historically spoken in northern western areas of South Australia.

Norman Tindale Norman Barnett Tindale AO (12 October 1900 – 19 November 1993) was an Australian anthropologist, archaeologist, entomologist and ethnologist. Life Tindale was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1900. His family moved to Tokyo and lived ther ...

recorded Kokatha speakers at Tarcoola, Kingoonya,

Pimba Pimba is a Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Po ...

, and McDouall Peak; west to

Ooldea Ooldea is a tiny settlement in South Australia. It is on the eastern edge of the Nullarbor Plain, west of Port Augusta on the Trans-Australian Railway. Ooldea is from the bitumen Eyre Highway. Being near a permanent waterhole, Ooldea Soak, ...

; north to

Stuart Range The Stuart Range is a mountain range in central Washington, United States. The range lies within the eastern extent of the Cascade Range immediately southwest of Leavenworth and runs east–west. The western peaks make up a single sharp ridge. ...

and Lake Phillipson. At the time of first European contact, their lands appeared to centre on Mount Eba, covering surrounding land to Kingoonya, Tarcoola,

Coober Pedy Coober Pedy () is a town in northern South Australia, north of Adelaide on the Stuart Highway. The town is sometimes referred to as the "opal capital of the world" because of the quantity of precious opals that are mined there. Coober Pedy is ...

and possibly Ooldea. Today, Kokatha people live in

Ceduna Ceduna may refer to: *Ceduna, South Australia, a town and locality *Ceduna Airport Ceduna Airport is a public airport in Ceduna, South Australia. The airport, which is owned by the District Council of Ceduna is located adjacent to the Eyre ...

Koonibba Koonibba is a locality and an associated Aboriginal community in South Australia located about northwest of the state capital of Adelaide and about northwest of the municipal seat in Ceduna and north of the Eyre Highway. The settlement ...

, Port Augusta,

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

and other places around the state.

Classification

Kokatha is a dialect of the Western Desert language group, closely related to other dialects in the group. It is to be distinguished from the two other Western Desert dialects known as Kokatja or Kukatja dialect (A68 and C7 in AUSTLANG). Kokatha has also been grouped as a Far West Coast language, together with

Mirning The Mirning, also known as the Ngandatha, are an Aboriginal Australian people whose traditional lands lay on the coastal region of the Great Australian Bight extending from Western Australia into south-west South Australia. Name ''Mirniŋ'' was ...

and Wirangu. In 1972, linguist John Platt published a

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...

of the Kokatha language. Platt distinguished two types, Gugada and Gugadja, with Gugadja more like Western Desert than Gugada, which he thought was linked more closely to Wirangu. the distinctions between the two are not clear, but both remain classified as Kokatha by AIATSIS in their AUSTLANG database.

Overlap with other languages

People from Kokatha, Mirning and Wirangu language groups lived at Koonibba Mission from around 1900, and many

loan word A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...

s moved among the languages there and across the region.PDF
/ref> A wordlist compiled by Pastor August Hoff, Superintendent of Koonibba Mission from 1920 to 1930, between 1920 and 1952 and published by his son Lothar in 2004, included words from the Wirangu, Kokatha and

Pitjantjatjara language Pitjantjatjara (; or ) is a dialect of the Western Desert language traditionally spoken by the Pitjantjatjara people of Central Australia. It is mutually intelligible with other varieties of the Western Desert language, and is particularly ...

s. According to Kokatha woman Dylan Coleman in her 2010 PhD thesis,

Luise Hercus Luise Anna Hercus , , (16 January 1926 – 15 April 2018) was a German-born linguist who lived in Australia from 1954. After significant early work on Middle Indo-Aryan dialects (Prakrits) she had specialised in Australian Aboriginal languages si ...

' work entitled ''A grammar of the Wirangu language from the west coast of South Australia'' (1999) was based on the words spoken by two fluent Kokatha speakers, who were Coleman's grandmothers. They believed that their input was part of the work to create a Kokatha dictionary, and refuted Hercus' claim that the language was Wirangu, as they had been taught Kokatha language and culture by Kokatha elders for generations.

Language revival

The Mobile Language Team works with the Far West Language Centre in Ceduna in researching the Kokatha language and performing other language-related activities.

Country

Classification

Overlap with other languages

Language revival

References

Further reading