Kunjen, or Uw, is a

Paman language The Paman languages are an Australian language family spoken on Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. First noted by Kenneth Hale, Paman is noteworthy for the profound phonological changes which have affected some of its descendants. Classifica ...

spoken on the Cape York Peninsula of Queensland, Australia, by the Uw Oykangand,

Olkola The Olkolo or Koko-olkola' are an Indigenous Australian people of central and eastern Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland. According to Norman Tindale, they are to be distinguished from the Kokangol, higher up on the Alice River watershed ...

, and related Aboriginal Australian peoples. It is closely related to Kuuk Thaayorre, and perhaps Kuuk Yak. Two of its dialects, Uw Olkola (Olgolo) and Uw Oykangand (Koko Wanggara), are very close, being

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 an ...

and sharing 97% of their core vocabulary. Another two, Ogh-Undjan and Kawarrangg, are also close, but somewhat more distant from the first pair. Kokinj (Kokiny) is a subdialect of Ogh-Undjan. A fifth variety, Athima, is poorly attested. Below is a table showing the mutual intelligibility in vocabulary between the Kunjen dialects, based on a list of 100 basic words. A small

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...

of Kunjen has been compiled by Philip Hamilton. A great majority of words begin with a vowel (>96%), similar to the situation in distantly-related

Arrernte Arrernte (also spelt Aranda, etc.) is a descriptor related to a group of Aboriginal Australian peoples from Central Australia. It may refer to: * Arrernte (area), land controlled by the Arrernte Council (?) * Arrernte people, Aboriginal Australi ...

. Exceptions include

kinship terms Kinship terminology is the system used in languages to refer to the persons to whom an individual is related through kinship. Different societies classify kinship relations differently and therefore use different systems of kinship terminology ...

and loanwords. Syllable onsets are thought to be present in all languages, so their absence in native lexicon is highly notable.

Respect register

As in many other Australian languages, such as Dyirbal, Kunjen also has a respect register, which is a polite way of speaking with a potential

mother-in-law A parent-in-law is a person who has a legal affinity with another by being the parent of the other's spouse. Many cultures and legal systems impose duties and responsibilities on persons connected by this relationship. A person is a child-in-la ...

and is called ''Olkel-Ilmbanhthi''. Most of the vocabulary is replaced, while

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...

es and function words are kept. The sentence below is in normal Uw Oykangand: : Alka-nhdh idu-rr ay : ''spear''- ''spear''- ''I'' : ''"I speared it with a spear"'' The equivalent in ''Olkel-Ilmbanhthi'' is: : Udnga-nhdh yanganyunyja-rr ay : ''spear''- ''spear''- ''I'' : ''"I speared it with a spear"''

Phonology

Vowels

Kunjen has 5 vowels: There is a lexical

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...

constraint in Kunjen: Close and mid vowels do not co-occur in a word.

Consonants

Kunjen has 27 consonants:

In popular culture

The Uw Olkola word for the freshwater crocodile, ''ogakor'', was used as the name of a tribe on the second season of the American reality television series,

Survivor Survivor(s) may refer to: Actual survivors * *Last survivors of historical events Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Survivors, characters in the 1997 ''KKnD'' video-game series * ''The Survivors'', or the ''New Survivors Found ...

in 2001.

References

* Sommer, Bruce A. 1969. Kunjen phonology: synchronic and diachronic. (Pacific Linguistics: Series B, Monographs, 11.) Canberra: Australian Natl. Univ. 76pp.
Uw Olkola and Uw Oykangand Language Information
Southwestern Paman languages Endangered indigenous Australian languages in Queensland Severely endangered languages {{ia-lang-stub