The Warumungu (or ''Warramunga'') language is spoken by the Warumungu people in Australia's Northern Territory. In addition to spoken language, the Warumungu have a highly developed sign language.

Classification

The Warumungu language is a Pama–Nyungan language similar to the Warlpiri language spoken by the Warlpiri people.

History

In the 1870s, early white explorers described the Warumungu as a flourishing nation.The Warumungu: ''The Land is Always Alive''
Retrieved 23 December 2008 However, by 1915, invasion and reprisal had brought them to the brink of

starvation Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy intake, below the level needed to maintain an organism's life. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, dea ...

.Blackwell-Reference Online: Warumungu (Australian: Pama–Nyungan)
Retrieved 23 December 2008 In 1934, a reserve that had been set aside for the Warumungu in 1892 was revoked in order to clear the way for gold prospecting. By the 1960s, the Warumungu had been entirely removed from their native land.

Current status

Warumungu is classified as a living language, but its number of speakers seemed to be decreasing quickly. In the mid-1950s, Australian linguist Robert Hoogenraad estimated that there were only about 700 people who could speak some Warumungu;Aboriginal Child Language Acquisition Project: Warumungu
Retrieved 22 December 2008 by 1983, the population was estimated to be as small as 200 speakers.Ethnologue report for language code:wrm
" in Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'', Fifteenth edition
Dallas, Tex.:

SIL International SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics) is an evangelical Christian non-profit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to ex ...

. However, the language has evidently undergone something of a renaissance. Today, the language is in a robust position compared to many indigenous Australian languages, as it is being acquired by children and used in daily interaction by all generations, and the situation is sustainable though some ethnic group members may prefer Kriol.

Syntax and morphology

Warumungu is a suffixing language, in which verbs are formed by adding a tense

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...

(although some verbs are formed by compounding a preverb). As are many of the surviving Indigenous Australian languages, the Warumungu language is undergoing rapid change. The morphology used by younger speakers differs significantly than the one used by older speakers. An example of a Warumungu sentence might be , meaning 'father's mother, is she there, in town, or not?'.Scholar Sceptic: Australian Aboriginal Studies
Retrieved 23 December 2008

External links

* Paradisec ha
a number of collections that include Warumungu language materials.

References

{{Australian Aboriginal languages Pama–Nyungan languages Languages of Australia