The Garawan languages (Garrwan), or Yanyi, are a small

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in hist ...

Australian Aboriginal 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 ...

currently spoken in northern Australia. The languages are: * Garawa (Garrwa, north) *

Waanyi The Waanyi people, also spelt Wanyi, Wanji, or Waanji, are an Aboriginal Australian people from south of the Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland and the Northern Territory. Language The Waanyi language, although earlier thought to be extinct, wa ...

† (Wanji, south) * Gunindiri † (Kurnindirri, southwest) Gunindiri is almost entirely unknown. Garawan may be related to the

Pama–Nyungan languages The Pama–Nyungan languages are the most widespread family of Australian Aboriginal languages, containing 306 out of 400 Aboriginal languages in Australia. The name "Pama–Nyungan" is a merism: it derived from the two end-points of the range: ...

, though this is not accepted in Bowern 2011. The languages are close: Dixon (2002) says that it should be straightforward to reconstruct proto-Garawa–Wanji.

Vocabulary

Capell Capell or Capel is a surname. Notable people with the name include: Capell * Arthur Capell, 1st Baron Capell of Hadham (1608–1649), English politician * Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of Essex (1631–1683), English statesman * Arthur Capell (1902–1 ...

(1940) lists the following basic vocabulary items:Capell, Arthur. 1940
The Classification of Languages in North and North-West Australia
''Oceania'' 10(3): 241-272, 404-433. :

References

Language families Non-Pama-Nyungan languages {{ia-lang-stub