Nhanda, also rendered Nanda, Nhanta and Nhandi, is an Australian Aboriginal language from the Midwest region of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

, between

Geraldton Geraldton ( Wajarri: ''Jambinu'', Wilunyu: ''Jambinbirri'') is a coastal city in the Mid West region of the Australian state of Western Australia, north of the state capital, Perth. At June 2018, Geraldton had an urban population of 37,648. ...

and the Murchison River, from the coast to about inland. The language is now spoken, or semi-spoken, by only a few people. The AIATSIS Austlang database says: "According to ulietteBlevins (2001:3) three dialects of Nhanda can be identified: Nhanda, the northernmost dialect, Watchandi W13, the central dialect, and Amangu W12, the southern dialect. Thus Nhanda is both a language name and a dialect name". No speakers are listed in successive tallies since 1975, but the Irra Wangga Language Centre (formerly Yamaji Language Centre) has been working on its revival, originally led by Blevins. Nanakarti was apparently a distinct language. While Nhanda is usually considered a member of the Kartu branch of the Pama–Nyungan family, distinctive features of Nhanda, relative to neighbouring languages have caused some linguists to question this classification, and/or classify Nhanda as an

isolate Isolate may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Isolate'' (film), a 2013 Australian film * ''Isolate'' (Circus Maximus album), 2007 * ''Isolate'' (Gary Numan album), 1992 Language * Isolating language, with near-unity morpheme/word ...

. A controversial hypothesis, first raised by historian

Rupert Gerritsen Rupert Gerritsen (1953 – 3 November 2013) was an Australian historian and a noted authority on Indigenous Australian prehistory. Coupled with his work on early Australian cartography, he played an influential part in re-charting Australian h ...

, suggests that the unusual features of Nhanda may result from undocumented language contact during the early modern era, with

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

– in the form of shipwrecked seafarers stranded in Australia before European settlement had officially begun. Gerritsen's hypothesis has been rejected by linguist

Juliette Blevins Juliette Blevins is an American linguist whose work has contributed to the fields of phonology, phonetics, historical linguistics, and typology. She is currently Professor of Linguistics at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Career Blevins received her ...

, an authority on Nhanda. Gerritsen critiqued the rejection of his views by Blevins in a subsequent paper, re-outlining his evidence of Dutch influence on Nhanda.

Vocabulary

The Nhanda word for 'man, human being' is ''arnmanu''. It appears that when

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 ...

collected information on Nhanda (or on the closely related variety thought to have been spoken in

) he was given this word, which he recorded as 'Amangu' and believed to be the 'tribal name' for this group.

Phonology

Nhanda differs somewhat from its neighbouring languages in that it has a

phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...

glottal stop, is initial-dropping (i.e. it has lost many initial consonants, leading to vowel-initial words) and the stop consonants show a phonemic length contrast.

Vowels

Consonants

Language revival

Juliette Blevins, at the time employed at the University of Western Australia, researched Nhanda in the 1990s and early 2000s in collaboration with the Yamaji Language Centre (now the Irra Wangga Language Centre) and published a grammar of the language. An illustrated topical dictionary, ''Nhanda Wangganhaa'', was published by the Yamaji Language Centre in 1998. Other published works include papers on its

phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

and history. Doug Marmion has also been working on the language.

References

Cited references

Other references

* * {{Pama–Nyungan languages, West Kartu languages Extinct languages of Western Australia