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The Wirangu language, also written Wirrongu, Wirrung, Wirrunga, and Wirangga, and also known by other
exonym An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, ...
s, is a
moribund Moribund refers to a literal or figurative state near death. Moribund may refer to: * ''Moribund'' (album), a 2006 album by the Norwegian black metal band Koldbrann * " Le Moribond", a song by Jacques Brel known in English as "Seasons in the Sun ...
Australian Aboriginal language traditionally spoken by 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 ...
, living on the west coast 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 ...
across a region encompassing modern
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 ...
and Streaky Bay, stretching west approximately to the head of the
Great Australian Bight The Great Australian Bight is a large oceanic bight, or open bay, off the central and western portions of the southern coastline of mainland Australia. Extent Two definitions of the extent are in use – one used by the International Hydrog ...
and east to
Lake Gairdner Lake Gairdner is a large endorheic salt lake in the Australia, Australian state of South Australia, to the north of the Eyre Peninsula. When in flood, the lake is considered the third largest salt lake in Australia. Description Lake Gairdner i ...
. It is a language of the Thura-Yura group, and some older sources placed it in a subgroup called Nangga.


Classification and influences

The Wirangu language is most closely related to the Thura–Yura group of Australian Aboriginal languages, which are spoken from the West Coast to the
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 ...
area and north to the
Flinders Ranges The Flinders Ranges are the largest mountain range in South Australia, which starts about north of Adelaide. The ranges stretch for over from Port Pirie to Lake Callabonna. The Adnyamathanha people are the Aboriginal group who have inhabit ...
and
Lake Eyre Lake Eyre ( ), officially known as Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, is an endorheic lake in east-central Far North South Australia, some north of Adelaide. The shallow lake is the depocentre of the vast endorheic Lake Eyre basin, and contains th ...
. The best-known relatives of Wirangu are
Barngarla The Barngarla, formerly known as Parnkalla and also known as Pangkala, are an Aboriginal people of the Port Lincoln, Whyalla and Port Augusta areas. The Barngarla are the traditional owners of much of Eyre Peninsula, South Australia. Languag ...
, Nauo,
Nukunu Nukunu are an Aboriginal Australian people of South Australia, living around the Spencer Gulf area. In the years after British colonisation of South Australia, the area was developed to contain the cities of Port Pirie and Port Augusta. Name Bot ...
,
Adnyamathanha The Adnyamathanha (Pronounced: ) are a contemporary Aboriginal Australian people of the northern Flinders Ranges, South Australia, formed as an aggregate of several distinct peoples. Strictly speaking the ethnonym Adnyamathanha was an alternativ ...
, Narangga and
Kaurna The Kaurna people (, ; also Coorna, Kaura, Gaurna and other variations) are a group of Aboriginal people whose traditional lands include the Adelaide Plains of South Australia. They were known as the Adelaide tribe by the early settlers. Kaurn ...
. Because of the intensive culture contacts in the southern half of South Australia, which brought dislocation and culture change, traditional lifestyles and traditional ways of speaking declined during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the case of Wirangu, the establishment of the Koonibba Mission in 1898 brought intense contact with other languages, in particular
Kokatha The Kokatha, also known as the Kokatha Mula, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of South Australia. They speak the Kokatha language, close to or a dialect of the Western Desert language. Country Traditional Kokatha lands extend ov ...
. Like most
Aboriginal Australian languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...
, the two languages share a common ancestor in the Pama–Nyungan group, but while Wirangu is a Thura-Yura language, Kokatha is defined as a Wati language. Neighbouring languages often borrow words from one another, and the new intense contacts at Koonibba led to a significant influx of Kokatha words which have become part of present-day Wirangu. 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 refuted Hercus' claim that the language was Wirangu, as they had been taught Kokatha language and culture by Kokatha elders for generations. Paul Monaghan subsequently spoke to the grandmothers, when researching the whereby a mythical narrative, ''Bilarl'', recorded by Daisy Bates was translated into Wirangu using Hercus' work and other sources.


Language revitalisation

Although there are very few fully fluent Wirangu speakers left, many Aboriginal people in the Ceduna area remember parts of the language. A Wirangu language revitalisation program has been underway at Ceduna and surrounding areas since 2004. This has involved the recording of Wirangu language from the last two recognised full speakers of the language, Gladys and Doreen Miller. With the assistance of linguists from the University of Adelaide a number of printed and digital books have been produced for use in schools and in the wider community. In 2005 the Far West Languages Centre was established in Ceduna. The centre supports and promotes the use of the Wirangu language as well as other extremely endangered local languages, such as Gugada/Kokatha and
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 ...
.


Phonology


Vowels

Wirangu has three phonemic vowels (a, i, u). Vowel length is not usually considered phonemic in Wirangu, as vowel length is normally short, although it is predictably long in all monosyllabic words (Wirangu 'ma' a: 'wa' a: 'mil' i:l etc.), borrowings from other languages ('maatha' a:t̪a< English "master"), and cases of initial consonant loss across phonological boundaries ('marna' + '(k)artu' = 'marnaartu' aɳa:ʈu.


Consonants

The consonantal phonemic inventory of Wirangu is very similar to that of many other Pama Nyungan languages, with six series of stops and nasals. Voicing is not phonemic in the Wirangu stop series, and many stops are either unvoiced or semivoiced.Hercus, pp. 26; L.A. Hercus uses the voiced stop equivalents "b", "d", "g", etc. in her orthography. Wirangu also has two
rhotics In phonetics, rhotic consonants, or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including , in the Latin script and , in the Cyrillic script. They ...
, an alveolar flap/trill and a more retroflex rhotic.


Notes


Further reading

* * * Includes extensive bibliography. {{Pama–Nyungan languages, South Thura-Yura languages